


One Red Thread

by adventurepants



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 22:04:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/pseuds/adventurepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma watches Regina for a moment, who looks as if she's gone somewhere else entirely. Emma loves her parents and knows that they're the good guys, that they only ever wanted to do what's right. But she knows as well that they are selfish, just like everyone else. Her mother is not as pure as her name, not here or anywhere—and there is good, too, in Regina, who loves their son in a way that Emma is only just beginning to understand. “They're happy,” Emma says. “They deserve to be.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that will include Swan Queen, but first and foremost is a story about Emma finding her place in her family. As such, it's... possible that Regina's not actually in the first chapter. Bear with me. Also, I write outrageously slow, but I've been working on this for a while now (and thank you from the bottom of my tiny little heart to my beautiful proofreading team who have been reading along) and I think I'm far enough ahead of myself to start posting. I hope I'm right.

_I have to say there was a mile or two_  
 _I had the itch to fly and I flew_  
 _Now at best we would make our dreams_ _  
__With something used_

 “One Red Thread” - Blind Pilot

*

It's with an oddly peaceful certainty that Emma finally realizes all of this was going to happen anyway. That's what prophecies mean. Even if she had been adopted, if she'd grown up with parents that weren't hers by blood but that _loved_ her—the way Regina, Henry's _mother_ , loves him—she would have come here, to Storybrooke, and broken the curse.

It's the kind of thing that should make her mad—would have, not too long ago—but she's lost the energy to be angry about things that can't be changed, and never could. There's plenty to be mad about that can.

It's difficult, now, to look back and wish that her life had been different. For 28 years she had wished fervently, bitterly, that she could have had a family, that anyone had given a damn about her during all those long years in the system. But if she'd had a better life, she wouldn't have met Neal, which means she wouldn't have had Henry.

It's too strange to think about, too awful, that the price for having known the love of a family would have been the existence of her son. She wouldn't erase him for the happiest childhood in the world. There are broken places in her, and she's learned to accept that they will never be fixed, that given the choice now she would choose not to fix them.

Understanding this doesn't make it easier. But she loves her parents, as well as she knows how.

She tries to explain it to Henry in a way he'll understand, when he asks her why she doesn't call them Mom and Dad. “It's not that I don't care about them, or that I don't want them as parents, it's just that... I don't know how to do family very well.”

They're sitting in her car outside of Mary Margaret's apartment (because she's still allowed to think of it as Mary Margaret's and not Snow's, she's still allowed to think of it as her first real home) and any moment now her mother will probably come down the stairs and tap on the window and ask what on Earth they're doing sitting out here in the dark.

Emma expects Henry to become frustrated, to tell her that of _course_ she knows how to have a family, she's made of true love, that the curse is broken and they're together now and this should be easy. That love fixes everything. But he just blinks at her, so surprised and confused that she thinks he must have taken it the wrong way. 

“Oh, kid, that doesn't mean I don't love you. I do. You know that I do. It's just-”

Henry shakes his head. “It's not that. It's just... that's what my mom said.”

He's spent a long time believing with every cell in his little body that Emma and his mom, at opposite ends of this curse, could never intersect, and so Emma understands why he'd be taken aback at this similarity. If she were better at this whole parenting thing she might have a better idea of what to say, but she only stares at her son blankly and says, “She did?”

“Yeah, sort of. When you were gone. When she sent me to live with Grandpa, she said she didn't know how to love people very well. But I always thought... before the book I mean... I never thought she was bad at it. I don't think you're bad at it, either.” He fiddles with the zipper on his jacket and shifts against the seatbelt still holding him in. He looks nervous, and if she's honest it makes her want to cry, just a little, because if there's one thing in this entire fucked up world that Henry should be sure of, it's that he is cherished, and always will be.

“Henry, you know that I didn't have an easy life, growing up. It's... being loved is something you have to be taught, kind of early, and I just... wasn't. It doesn't mean I can't love people, just that... it's new. I'm still trying to adjust.”

Henry looks out the window, and then back at her. “So you mean when you used to get kind of stiff and weird when I hugged you, it's because you didn't know how to love me yet?”

Emma laughs and reaches out to brush his hair out of his face. (He needs it trimmed, Snow keeps saying, but it's not as if Emma gets her own hair cut all that often, so it's not something she's used to having to remember.) “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

“But I knew how to love you, because... because my mom loved me, when I was a baby?”

“Yes,” she says, remembering how he'd looked when he was first born, how she'd held him just once, and known that he deserved better than her. “Your mom has always loved you.”

“I know,” he mumbles, and looks down at his hands. “Emma?” he asks after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“The way you love me. That's how your parents love you, too.”

And it's true, she knows that at least. She had learned it, finally, in her mother's arms, in her nursery in another world.

She was going to come through that magic tree, uncursed, no matter what. If Gepetto wouldn't budge, wouldn't give up Pinnochio's seat, that meant she would be alone—it erased all other options. They couldn't go with her, and they couldn't keep her. She would find them on her twenty-eighth birthday—this was in the prophecy, this was immovable. Caught up in the curse, a newborn for eternity, she would never have reached 28, and though they didn't know when they sent her away that this is what the curse would bring, it didn't mean it wasn't already true. And though a lifetime of tending to an infant who would wail and whine throughout the night would have been a creative punishment for Snow White, Regina would not have chosen it. Mary Margaret would have treasured her little girl far too much, regardless, to have been allowed to keep her. The curse would have ripped them as far apart as it had Snow and Charming.

Emma knows this. She knows, that no matter what other variables were introduced or eliminated, there are three things that were always going to be true: she was going to be placed in that tree, she was going to come to Storybrooke on her birthday, and her parents were going to love her.

“Let's go inside,” she tells Henry. “They're probably waiting to have dinner with us.”

Mary Margaret's apartment is really too small for the four of them, and it's weird, living in such close quarters with the parents that she hasn't quite figured out how to be loved by properly, but honestly it's been easier not to think about leaving just yet. It's one thing, to have Henry stay here, his belongings lying all over the place with nowhere to go in a way that screams impermanence, and another entirely for Emma to move out and take him with her, to give him a _home_ that isn't Regina's.

Henry had asked her to spare his mom, when the curse broke; Emma thinks that part of that, whether it's apparent to Henry or not, is not taking him away from her in a way that seems so significant. Henry, for his part, hasn't complained about sleeping on an air mattress on Emma's bedroom floor, despite being accustomed to much classier accommodations.

They're living on top of each other, their broken little family, and that's something Emma knows from group homes crowded with children, where she would lie in bed at night and wish for a family to swoop in and take her away. She wonders how things would be different now if it had happened, if she had another family somewhere beyond the town line, in Boston or Phoenix or Tallahassee, anywhere. Anyone in the world who would have missed her after she'd crossed over the boundary of this mystery town in Maine.

Her parents are wracked with guilt, consumed with it, that she had to grow up without them to care for her. But if someone _had_ cared for her—if she had grown up with some other couple as her parents, she doesn't imagine it would be any easier for Snow and David. It was going to suck, either way. The best Emma can hope for is that everything from now on will suck a little less.

Henry sees Regina at least once a week, and he looks solemn and hopeful when he says that she's trying. Emma believes him. They're all trying.

*

Sometimes Emma looks at Snow and sees Mary Margaret, the woman who gave her a home, who became the first real friend she'd had in a very long time. Someone who is not quite lost to her, but will never be the same. Sometimes, like today, Snow smiles warmly at her and looks happy and settled and kind and like she loves no one in the world so much as Emma, and Emma sees her mother. 

“We have something to tell you,” Snow says, beaming. “We wanted to wait until Henry was with Regina, so we could tell you alone.” 

“We want you to be the first to know,” David tells her, with his arm around Snow's waist and the kind of unreserved joy on his face that makes it easier to understand why, if true love were going to be bottled, it had to be theirs. 

Snow's hand spreads across her stomach, and the split second during which Emma realizes what she's going to say before she says it seems to take an eternity. 

“I'm pregnant,” Snow blurts out like she's been forcibly holding it in for days, like she would not feel complete until she could share this news with Emma, and Emma knows it's more important that her reaction be _right_ than that it be real. 

“Oh my God!” she says, and hopes that she sounds appropriately excited. “Oh my God, that's great!” She's pulled into a tight hug by both parents, and some stupid part of her that's used to being alone, used to losing things, says _remember this._  

“I'm only a few weeks along, and I know you're not really supposed to start telling people so early, but we had to tell you.” She laughs. “Oh, you're going to be a big sister.” 

“Really big,” Emma says, and tries to imagine it. Some tiny prince or princess who will be surrounded by love, surrounded by family. Someone who will give her parents a chance to _be_ parents. They so clearly _want_ this, and she's not a monster, she wants them to be happy. 

Snow hugs her again and says softly, “Oh, Emma. I think this is finally it. I think we finally get to have our happy ending.” 

 _*_  

Henry had asked her a long time ago, months before she believed in princesses and magic hats and belonging to anyone but herself, how she'd feel about Mary Margaret and David having another baby. 

“Well, as far as I know neither of them have had a first baby,” she told him as they sat across from each other in a booth at the diner. She popped a fry in her mouth as he fixed her with a look that suggested he believed she was very slow. Nurture over nature, she thought. “Oh, right. Me.” 

“So, do you think they'll have more kids? I bet they would have had a lot, if the curse hadn't happened. I would have had tons of aunts and uncles.” 

Emma didn't argue. None of that was real, why traumatize the kid by bringing up how many fairy tale mothers had died in childbirth, or the fact that Henry was a specific combination of genes and in a different set of circumstances, he wouldn't have existed? “Mary Margaret seems like she'd be a great mom,” was the answer she'd settled on. “If she wants kids, then she should have them. You know, when the time is right, or... whatever.” 

Henry sipped the chocolate milkshake they'd agreed not to mention to Regina. “Would you be jealous?” 

“Why would I be jealous?” 

“You know,” he sighed impatiently. “Because you might think they won't love you as much if they have a new baby.” 

Emma coughed. “Kid, Mary Margaret's going to... _like_ me, whether she has a baby or not.” 

Henry rolled his eyes as he reached for the ketchup bottle. “ _I_ know that, I just wanted to make sure _you_ did. You're really important to them, Emma. Even if they have like ten more babies.” 

“...Right,” she said, and ate another fry. “Henry, is this some really roundabout way of saying you'd be all right if I had another kid? Because you really don't have to worry about that. I don't think your mom's planning on having more kids, either.” 

Henry's nose crinkled in displeasure. “Of course _she's_ not, who'd have a baby with her?”

“Well, she adopted you. She could... adopt another baby, if she wanted to.” 

He shook his head. “I don't think it works like that. I had to be here, because you had to have someone to lead you to Storybrooke. I mean, think about it. What are the chances that I ended up here by _accident?_ It was all part of breaking the curse. I don't think she could just get another baby.” 

“Of course. This is all part of my special destiny, huh?” She offered him a lopsided smile, and he nodded at her, grinning. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm glad you're starting to figure this out.” 

Now, she's not sure she has anything figured out, but at least that's not a new feeling. 

Henry, when he's told about the baby, finds it alternately wonderful and hilarious. It's one thing, apparently, to have grandparents the same age as one mom and younger than the other, and another entirely to have an aunt or uncle who's going to be an infant. 

“It's gonna be so weird!” he says. “I'm gonna be eleven when the baby's born. ...Will I call it Aunt or Uncle Whoever?” 

Charming smiles at him. “I think you can just call him by his name.”

“So it's a boy?” Henry asks, perking up just a little bit more. 

“No,” Snow says. “It's much too early to tell, and we've decided to wait until the baby's born to find out.” 

Henry looks at Emma in utter confusion, his small brow furrowed, and then turns back to his grandparents. “How are you gonna know what kind of stuff to get?”

Snow and Charming both laugh a bit at that, and Emma watches Henry's fist clench at his side for just a moment, until he realizes there's no dismissiveness in it. It's not like before, when every grown-up in his life told him that what he believed wasn't true. 

“Well,” Snow says, “babies need a lot of things, but most of them are the same for boys and girls. We'll just have to get some gender-neutral clothes and bedding, and when the baby comes, we'll be prepared either way. Besides, not knowing ahead of time is just the way it was back home, where we came from. And the way it was here, in this world, for thousands of years. Millions.” 

“But you knew my mom was a girl, before she was born. It was in the book. You told Rumpelstiltskin. You told him she was a girl, and her name was Emma.” 

It's still a shock, sometimes, to hear him say “my mom” and not mean Regina. Emma loves him more than she could ever find the words to describe, but still she knows she's barely scratched the surface of being a mom. Regina has years on her, years where Regina was all Henry had in the world. 

“Lucky guess,” Snow says, looking at Emma fondly, and they all know that she's lying. Emma heard the story, late at night in another world while Mulan and Aurora slept. Her parents' secret wedding and the swinging charm, the superstition, that told Snow her daughter was coming. 

Henry shakes his head. “How can you stand waiting, when you don't have to?”

Snow is loving and yet deeply sad as she says, reaching for her adult daughter's arm, “We waited 28 years for Emma. This is nothing.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Emma's first memory is of being replaced.

She can't remember anything else about that family, the Swans, who had given her a home and a name and must have been kind to her for those three years, _must_ have, because she remembers how hard she had cried when it was taken away. They were going to have a baby, they said. A new baby, their own, and it meant Emma had to go and stay with a new family. She had cried so hard it made her cough and gag, and she had been held and soothed but still sent away. 

“Be a good girl, Emma,” they told her. “We know you'll be good.” 

She was good sometimes and bad at other times and it never seemed to make a difference, she was always sent back. By the time she was five, anything she had known about being loved by a family withered away like an unused language. 

It feels childish, the way she thinks this baby will replace her, cover over all their wounds from losing her, and then they won't need her anymore. But she keeps remembering that day, that oldest memory—it's clear in her mind now in a way it hasn't been for years. She knows this is different, she knows her mother jumped through a portal to a land they were told no longer existed, to avoid being separated from Emma again. But what she knows and what she feels don't always line up in a way that makes sense.

Emma finds Snow on the couch in her living room with a pile of five pregnancy books in front of her and another sitting open on her lap. Emma sits down next to her and reaches for one from the stack, thumbing through it without actually reading any of the words. “I know it's been a while, but don't you already pretty much know what to expect when you're expecting?” 

Snow sighs and turns a page. “I've never been pregnant in this world. I feel like there's so much more to worry about, doctor's appointments and ultrasounds and... what kind of crib mattress to use. I know that sounds silly, obviously back home it was riskier, we didn't have the kind of medical care we have here, and there was no way to predict or fix anything that could go wrong... I was very scared, and very tired, with you. We knew Regina's curse was coming, and I feared what kind of world I would be bringing you into, whether... whether she would try to take you from me or hurt you, but I... we loved you so much. We were just like any expectant parents back home, we had faith and hoped for the best. That's all there was to do. This time, there's so much I don't know.” 

She's staring at the book, looking dreamy and far away, like she's remembering being pregnant with Emma. How she had waited, and hoped, and loved her from the very start. 

Emma shrugs. “It's... I mean, I was in prison, so. I don't really have a lot of practical advice.” She wants to bolt, suddenly, wants to be anywhere but sitting next to her pregnant mother talking about babies, but this new life means running's not an option anymore. 

Snow sets her book aside and turns to Emma, with one of those looks that's somehow full of love and guilt and regret all at the same time. “I know,” she says, bringing her hand up to Emma's cheek. 

“I didn't, um. I didn't mean to be a downer. You don't have to feel bad about it, it's in the past. It's done.”

Snow takes Emma's hand and squeezes it. “It's done, yes, but I can feel bad about it if I want. I can feel bad about not being there for my daughter.” 

Emma shrugs again, but lets her mother hold her hand. “Not totally your fault, as it turns out.” 

Snow looks at her books and sighs but doesn't pick one up again. “Did you think about Henry, after you gave him up? Or was it easier not to, or...” She stops. “I'm sorry. You don't have to talk about it.” 

“I thought about him a lot at first,” Emma says. “All the time. I didn't... have anyone, when I got out of jail, and I thought about what I was missing, with him. But I knew I did the right thing. So after a while, I thought about him less, and then after a few years... I didn't think about him at all.”

Snow closes her eyes. “When I said goodbye to you, I didn't know I was about to forget you. If I hadn't, I don't know that I would have survived. I don't know if I would have made it.” 

Emma feels suddenly like she could cry, if she'd let herself. “You would have made it,” she says. Her mother is the strongest person she knows, even if she can't form the words to tell her that. “Of course you would have.” 

“Maybe. I would have known you were coming back, at least.” She leans back against the couch. “Oh, Emma,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“We had to wait such a long time for this. I'm so glad we're together now.” 

“Me too,” Emma says after a moment, hoping it sounds all right. 

* 

The town is still held in by the boundary, and she wonders how they'll explain that to the child, if they can't fix it. Maybe her parents will simply tell the truth. _We can't go on vacation because once upon a time, your nephew Henry's mother was very, very angry..._  

They can do that now. They can tell the truth, can know things as they are. 

Emma stands in the forest, toes up against the line. The perimeter is guarded at all times, usually by dwarves or knights, but sometimes she takes a shift. There is more to do now than when she started this job—old rivalries heating up and years-old anger and hurt bubbling to the surface—the whole place feels ready to explode, some days. But other days are still slow, and paperwork is still so uninviting that she'd rather stand outside by herself and stare silently at a boundary that no one's tried to cross, or force anyone to cross, in weeks. 

She wonders if it might not make a lot of things easier if everyone crossed. But she would still remember, and so would Henry and Regina. It's only fair if everyone gets to forget. 

“Emma?” she hears her dad say from several feet behind her. “I'm here to relieve you.” 

He'd given back her badge and she'd made him her deputy. He had looked after Henry while she was gone, had taken care of the town in the best way that he knew how. And he'd put himself under a sleeping curse to help bring her home. Giving him a job seemed like the thing to do. 

Instead of turning around, she takes a step forward. 

“Emma!” he shouts, and she looks behind her to see him lunge forward, panicked, as if he's forgotten that she'll be fine, but he's too far away to grab her without stumbling over the line himself. 

She looks at him from the other side of the boundary. It's just air. There's no force field, nothing tangible, nothing she can _feel._ It's the same on either side. “David, it's okay. You know it doesn't work that way for me.” 

“What are you doing?” he asks, relaxing visibly. His daughter still knows who she is. His daughter has one life, not two.

She steps back over. “Sorry,” she says, shrugging. “I just... it's just to prove I can, sometimes.” 

He reaches for her and his fingers brush over her arm for a second until he steps closer and pulls her into a hug. His arms are strong and he is her father and something about this feels safe, even if she still barely knows him. “You're always going places I can't follow,” he says. 

He doesn't just mean the hat, or the line. Sometimes she forgets that he had been the one to put her in the wardrobe. His face was the last face she would have seen before the doors closed. “I'm not leaving Storybrooke. I wouldn't.” 

“Good,” he says, as he steps back and looks her over. She kicks at the dirt, embarrassed. 

“Um, so I'm just gonna go back to the station,” she says. “Call if you need me, but it's pretty quiet today. You'll probably be bored out of your skull, out here.” 

“Better than paperwork, though, right?” he asks, grinning. And maybe that's what anyone would say, but maybe she and her father are a little bit alike. It hurts and feels nice at the same time. 

She walks back to where she'd parked the patrol car and drives back into town, away from the line. 

* 

Emma hasn't been inside Regina's house since before the curse broke. She's not sure, in fact, how Regina's been filling her days, now that the town looks to Emma's parents to guide them rather than their long-time mayor. Not with magic, from what Henry says, though truthfully he doesn't say much about his time with Regina. Emma always wants to ask, but she gets the feeling that Henry intends to keep his mothers separate, as if by some kind of reverse Parent Trap, and so she lets him have his privacy. Her only contact with Regina in the past month has been a series of brief and civil hellos and goodbyes while dropping Henry off or picking him up. 

Regina is not nearly as intimidating as she used to be. It seems strange to think that about a woman who has enough magic in her body to destroy whole worlds, but circumstances have allowed Emma to see her son's mother in a new light. Her devotion to Henry, her desperation to be worthy of him, has made her unthreatening. 

Emma expects Henry to answer the door when she rings the bell, but instead it's Regina. He doesn't run in from the living room or come thumping down the stairs, and before Emma has a chance to ask, Regina says, “He's asleep. He said he didn't sleep well last night, and I told him it would be all right to lie down in his bedroom.” 

It's barely eight o'clock in the evening, but Emma's not surprised. Henry's nightmares don't come every night, now, but he does still have them. It will be a while before they fade away, Snow says, and Henry, because he's gotten it in his head that he needs to be a brave hero instead of a little boy, tries not to complain. “It's okay,” he tells his grandparents. “The dreams aren't as bad anymore.” 

When he wakes, it's not with a scream but with a sharp intake of breath that startles Emma awake as well. “Come here,” she always says, holding out her hand to him, and he shuffles off the air mattress and tucks himself into her embrace as she whispers, “It's okay, kid. You're safe. I won't let anything happen to you.” 

“Oh,” she says to Regina now. “Yeah, he had one of his dreams last night. Sometimes he can't get back to sleep afterwards, and David broke that necklace, so.” 

“I'd rather not wake him, but I suppose you'll want to take him back--” She stalls on the word _home,_ and before Emma can dwell too long on just how _sad_ Regina's eyes are, she protests.

“No, no, he needs his rest,” she says. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, and they just look at each other awkwardly for a moment as Emma wonders if it's such a good idea to leave Henry here overnight. 

“Would you like to come in?” Regina asks, finally. 

Emma tilts her head curiously, and before she does something dumb like ask Regina what on Earth would make her extend such an invitation, she realizes that maybe Regina is just lonely. “You're not gonna offer me any cider, are you?” 

Regina sighs as she steps aside to let Emma through the door. “No, Sheriff. Nor anything having to do with apples, I'd imagine.” 

Emma crosses the threshold of Regina's home. “I don't think I'll ever eat another apple for the rest of my life.”

Regina closes the door and leads Emma into her living room. “Yes, well, I'm sorry to have ruined an entire fruit for you.”

Emma hesitates for a moment as she trails behind Regina. It seems like an oddly flippant comment to make, when it's still a sore spot and always will be, that the poison meant to dispose of Emma almost cost them their son. She lets it go, though. Nothing _else_ about a civil invitation into Regina's home is as familiar. 

“I can get you something else to drink, if you like,” Regina says as they sit down across from each other. 

“No, I'm fine,” Emma tells her, and then after an awkward, quiet moment, asks, “So, um. How have you been? I don't... really know what you've been up to, since I got back.” 

“Miss Swan, I assure you, you don't have to pretend to be concerned with my well-being.” 

“Hey, you invited me in. Look, I just. I know we're not friends, but we're Henry's parents, and I want... I don't want the people he loves to be actively rooting against each other. That won't make him happy. I want him to be as happy as a kid from these messed up circumstances can possibly be.” 

Regina isn't quite as hateful as she might be when she says, “A few months ago you meant to take him from me.” 

“Yeah, well.” Emma shrugs. “Shit happens.” 

“Lovely,” Regina says. “How lucky Henry is to have a role model who's such a wordsmith.” 

Emma almost, almost laughs. “I guess he's got you to balance me out, though, right?” 

Something flashes over Regina's face that looks fragile and dangerous at once. Sharing Henry is all Emma has known, but it will never be what Regina wants. 

“Regina, I won't take him from you. I won't make that choice for him.” 

Regina looks at her sharply. “Then I am fine. As long as Henry remains in my life, I will be fine.” 

Emma nods. “Same.” They can understand each other on this point if not anything else, Emma thinks. They may not know how to love in a way that people expect, but they love Henry, need him, in a way that no one else in the world will ever understand. 

“Does he have the nightmares every night?” Regina asks, guilt painted so plainly on her face that Emma wants to look away. 

“No. A couple times a week. Snow says they'll fade.” 

“She is the expert in this area, isn't she?” 

Emma isn't quite sure how to take that, but she shakes it off, and says, “Henry can stay here tonight. I'll pick him up in the morning, after breakfast.” 

Regina just nods and exhales as if some great tension is leaving her body. Her son warm and safe in his bed, in her house. “I'll see you tomorrow, then.”


	3. Chapter 3

Emma goes home alone to Mary Margaret's apartment. Her mother never complains about living in this tiny, unglamorous place, never seems to yearn for her old palaces. Not the walls and floors and windows, anyway, not the beds and tables and trinkets. “My _home_ is with my family,” she says. She doesn't miss the Enchanted Forest as a _place_ so much as she misses what her life was then, when she was young and freshly married and fiercely optimistic. When her great losses, her mother and father, were years old and dulled by time. 

And anyway, Snow is still living on a teacher's salary, and David the modest pay from the Sheriff's department's fragile budget, so any new home they might choose within the confines of Storybrooke would not be extravagant. ( _Are_ there vacant homes in Storybrooke, Emma wonders, or had Regina created enough space for the town's static population only?) 

“Where's Henry?” Snow asks as Emma closes the door behind her.

“Spending the night at Regina's,” Emma says as she kicks her boots off, one hand on the back of the couch to steady herself. 

“Emma, do you really think that's wise?” Snow stands in the kitchen with a glass of water in one hand, while her other hand rests on her still flat stomach. That's something she does a lot now, Emma's noticed. Fingers spread, holding this baby in, holding it close to her. 

“Do I think it's wise to leave Henry with his mom? Yeah, I think it's fine.” 

“Emma,” Snow says in a chastising tone that makes Emma want to roll her eyes and inform Snow that she is a grown woman who can make decisions without anyone else's input. She wonders if all adult children feel like this, or if it's only that they're making up for lost time. But Snow had scolded Emma before, when she was just Mary Margaret (but not _just_ Mary Margaret, never _just._ ) 

“You know how much she loves him.” 

Snow glares at her daughter stubbornly but admits, “I do. But there's a reason he lives with us now.” 

“Yeah, well, there's a reason he still sees her. He'll be fine. I'm going to get him in the morning. I don't want to fight about this.” 

“Who's fighting?” David says as he comes through the door, deputy's badge clipped proudly to his belt.

Snow smiles at her husband. “Nobody's fighting, Charming.” Something in the set of her shoulders always seems to relax when he comes into a room. Is that what true love is? Do all the moments when they're not standing by your side become less real, less tolerable? Does the loss of it, the permanent loss, create a blackness so deep that not even a dark curse could fill it? 

“Good,” he says. “I'm too hungry to mediate.” He kisses Emma's cheek as he walks by on the way to the kitchen, and it's all right, isn't it? It's all right to have a father who's proud of her and a mother who thinks she knows best. That's what normal people have. They will never be normal, but they can have normal things, if they try. 

Emma does wish Henry was at home with her, that night as she's falling asleep, but she has known worse, a world away and half-convinced she would never get back to him. In the morning they'll be together again. 

* 

Henry calls at 6:30, and Emma is so deeply asleep that her phone rings four times before she understands what's happening. “Hello?” she says when she manages to answer. 

“You left me at my mom's house,” he says. He doesn't sound upset, but he does sound surprised. 

Emma pushes her hair out of her face and rubs at her eyes. “Are you okay?” 

“Yes,” he says, and it's testy—has he been given away by one mother, only to be given back by the second? 

“I did come to get you, but you were asleep,” she says. “I didn't want to wake you. I'm coming to pick you up in a little while, is that all right?” 

“Yeah,” he says. “It's just. It was weird, waking up here.” 

“Bad weird?” 

“No. It was okay. Which was the weird part, I guess. It's still my room.” Still his room, his house, his mother. 

Emma leans back against her pillows. “Henry, it's okay if you want to stay with her sometimes.” 

“I like being with you.”

Something swells in Emma's chest, something warm and strong. “I like being with you too. But hey, that doesn't mean you're not allowed to miss living with your mom. You can stay there anytime you want. It's okay with both of us.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Kid, you know how much your mom loves you. She wants you with her as often and for as long as you want to be there.” 

Henry doesn't answer right away. “No, I mean is it okay with you?” 

She wants him to be happy. That's what being a mother is, she's learning. “It's okay. I promise. You can stay there as much as you want, even half the time, or-” she stops, and doesn't dare offer more than half. “We'll work something out, okay? We'll talk about it with your mom.” 

“Okay,” he says. “I'll see you in a little while?” 

“As soon as I get some coffee,” she confirms. “I'll be there before you know it.” 

* 

The baby is due the first week of March, and Emma knows that by then she and Henry will need to move out of the apartment. Her parents would never ask her to leave, but if the place is too small for four, she imagines it will be completely unlivable for five, even if one of those people is an infant. 

She carries this around for a few days and doesn't discuss it with anyone, just turns it over and over in her head. Leaving this home behind, like so many before it—it seems utterly unappealing, but so does the alternative. And though she will always ache a bit over the ten years of Henry's life that she missed, being woken up several times a night by a squawling baby is not one of the lost experiences she most yearns for. Being woken up by her mother's very early morning sickness is quite enough. 

At the end of July, Emma wonders how long she can put off looking for somewhere else to live, when Snow and David inform her that they'll be moving before the end of the summer.

“We know we'll need more room when the baby comes,” Snow says, and Emma can't help but picture them, mother and father and baby, in a home that's all their own. A family that makes sense, a family that's whole. “Of course you and Henry could come with us, if you wanted, but I thought...” She smiles sadly and David squeezes her hand. “I thought you probably don't want to be living with your parents in your late 20s. I thought you might want to take over my lease, and stay here with Henry. Or you could live somewhere else, you don't have to stay here. You can do whatever you want.” She takes for granted that Emma will not leave Storybrooke, which should rankle, except that it's true. 

Emma's lived in dozens of houses and apartments and even her car, a few times when things got really rough, but this apartment is the only place that's ever been a home. “I'll stay,” she says, and is surprised by how relieved she feels. 

Snow seems satisfied as well. “Oh, I'm glad you said that. I just... felt so sad, thinking about this place being empty after so long. I know that's silly. But it was mine. It was ours.” 

Emma swallows those feelings down right away, and just tries to look happy instead. “Do you have a place picked out?” 

David nods. “It's on Edgewood, near the school. We're placing the down payment tomorrow.” 

“That's fast,” Emma says. “You didn't even tell me you were looking.” 

“I wanted you to come house-hunting with us, but your father wanted it to be a surprise,” Snow says. “And it's Storybrooke, so there weren't a lot of places to look at.” 

“We wanted to find a house quickly,” David adds. “So we could move in and get settled before Snow gets too big to help unpack.” He grins as Snow pulls her hand away and swats at him.

 “Charming!” she says, though there's a great deal more fondness than irritation in her tone. 

“I remember you started waddling, around your seventh month with Emma,” he says, laughing. 

“I did not _waddle_ ,” Snow argues. “I was _pregnant,_ I wasn't a duck.” 

“She waddled,” David says to Emma, grinning and with a look in his eyes that says _trust me._  

It's the first time Emma's ever heard her mother's first pregnancy discussed so casually, and she laughs, surprised. 

“You were as big as a house,” David tells Snow. “That doesn't mean you weren't still the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, but if you're going to be as big as a house again, we'd better have a house to put you in.” 

“Charming, honestly,” Snow says, but then she looks at Emma and her eyes well up. “Oh, Emma, we're not going to be living together anymore.” 

Emma's parents cry more often than anyone she's ever met, but since Snow's pregnancy hormones have kicked in it's become truly ridiculous. “Hey,” Emma says, reaching across the kitchen table for Snow's hand. “Come on, don't cry. It's okay.” 

Snow has Ruby as her best friend again and she doesn't need Emma that way anymore, but sometimes Emma forgets that before she came to town, Mary Margaret had been alone, too. “I'm sorry,” Snow says. “I'm being silly, of course it's okay.”

“And it's what, ten minutes away from here?” Emma reasons. “It's not like we'll be all that far apart.”

Snow blinks her tears away and nods. “I'll be fine in a minute. It's just that... I really liked living here with you.” 

“I liked it too,” Emma says, and she lacks the ability to say aloud that Mary Margaret was the first person since Neal that Emma had allowed herself to trust, that she had started to reverse Emma's opinion that she was better off alone. 

But Mary Margaret had understood her well enough back then, and her mother is no different. She holds Emma's hand and says, “I know,” the way she does every time Emma can't quite make _I love you_ come out of her mouth. 

* 

Emma shows up unannounced at Regina's house in the middle of the afternoon, shrugging awkwardly as Regina answers the door. “I was going to call first, but I thought that might be weird, too.” 

Regina raises an eyebrow. “Did you need something, Sheriff?” 

Emma rolls her eyes. “You know you can just call me Emma, now. Can I come in?” 

Regina doesn't issue a spoken invitation but she does step aside, and Emma steps inside the doorway and turns to face her again. “I came to talk about Henry.” 

“Yes?” Regina prompts when Emma doesn't continue right away.

“We should work out a better schedule,” Emma says. “You're his mom, this house shouldn't just be some place he visits for a few hours a week. I think he'd like to stay overnight sometimes, and not just by accident.” 

“I'd like that,” Regina says, and seems to be carefully controlling what little emotion she allows to pass over her face. Where her old masks were inscrutable, these new ones let Emma see right through. “I should think Henry would enjoy sleeping on a real bed from time to time.” 

“That doesn't actually have a whole lot to do with it,” Emma says, trying not to roll her eyes again. “He'll have an actual bedroom at the apartment soon, anyway.” 

“Oh? Are you planning on living under the kitchen table?” Regina asks with nearly believable disinterest. 

“My parents are moving,” Emma says. “Henry and I are staying in the apartment.” 

Regina is quiet for just a second too long before she says, “I have to admit I'm surprised that Snow's willing to let you so far out of her sight.”

“Well, she's pregnant,” Emma says flatly before she can think better of it. “They need a bigger place. Somewhere to raise a family.” 

Regina freezes for a moment. “Henry hasn't mentioned that.” 

“They're not really telling people yet,” Emma says, and shakes her head. “I don't know why I told you. I shouldn't have.”

“Well, one can hardly expect you to keep a secret. You do take after your mother in the most unfortunate ways.” Regina turns and heads toward her living room. “Come in and sit down, Emma.” 

Emma blinks a couple of times and then follows her. “You're not gonna ask me why I'm not more excited?” 

“I think it's perfectly obvious why you're not,” Regina says, and Emma is surprised by the complete lack of judgment in her tone. 

“They really want this baby,” she says as if to defend them, sinking down onto Regina's couch. 

Regina pauses before sitting down, and Emma can see the slightest of tremors in her hand. “Of course they do. They want, and want, and want.” 

Emma watches Regina for a moment, who looks as if she's gone somewhere else entirely. Emma loves her parents and knows that they're the good guys, that they only ever wanted to do what's right. But she knows as well that they are selfish, just like everyone else. Her mother is not as pure as her name, not here or anywhere—and there is good, too, in Regina, who loves their son in a way that Emma is only just beginning to understand. “They're happy,” Emma says. “They deserve to be.” 

“You don't have to pretend with me, dear, _I_ certainly won't be offended if you're not thrilled your parents are replacing you with a child whose life they'll actually be a part of.” 

It's a bit of a relief to hear someone else say it, even as the ache of still not belonging becomes almost unbearable. “I didn't really come here to talk about me,” she says. 

“Thankfully,” Regina says, in that superior tone of voice that's more familiar to Emma than any of her others. Despite the ways that Regina is changing, it's an unexpected source of comfort to Emma that she remains very much the same person. Other than Henry, everyone else has another name and another life for Emma to get to know, but she already knows Regina. 

“I don't really... know how to do this. I mean, should we... should we try having Henry stay here on weekends at first and see how that goes, or... or what?” She trails off and they're both quiet, until Emma sighs and Regina closes her eyes for a long moment. Emma wonders if they're both thinking the same thing—that not too long ago, Emma had been banned from Henry's life by his only legal guardian. That not too long after that, Emma meant to take him from Regina permanently. 

“I think you should ask Henry what he would like to do. I'd like him to be here as often as he wants.” 

Regina's house feels empty and still and too big. “I want to do this right, for him,” Emma tells her. “I don't really give a damn about anything else, about being the savior, unless I'm doing what's right for Henry.” 

“You're worried that allowing me to parent my son from time to time isn't what's right for him,” Regina says, a hard edge in her tone now, because this will never be easy. 

“ _Our_ son,” Emma can't help but correct. “And I didn't say that. I know that when it comes to Henry, we may not always agree, but we do want the same things. We want him to be safe, we want him to be happy. I think if we just take this slowly, we'll figure out the right balance.”

“I'd like to see him on his birthday,” Regina says. Henry turns eleven in two weeks and sometimes Emma wishes she could make time stop, too.

“Of course. That's... of course you can, I'm sure he wants that.” 

Regina smiles, just a little. “Has he made his list?” 

Emma's shoulders slump. “I looked at those Avengers Legos, that crap is expensive! How many sets does he really need?” He seems to have plenty already, huge containers of them that he leaves out all the time- if she steps on a stray brick in her bare feet one more time, she can't promise it won't go straight in the trash. 

“Oh,” Regina says, sounding unconcerned. “That's nothing. Just wait until Christmas.” 

* 

Emma stops at Granny's for coffee on most mornings—she wishes Ruby would come work for her again, but the one time she suggested it, Ruby had made it clear she had no interest in becoming the town's police dog. Today, Ruby hovers behind the counter for ten minutes while Emma sips at her coffee before finally fixing her with a pointed look and asking, “So, how's your mom?” 

Emma blinks. “She's... fine. Didn't you see her yesterday?” 

“Oh, I did, I was just wondering if... there's been any changes.” Ruby inspects her fingernails for a moment and then looks back at Emma, as if she's trying very hard to be casual.

“Changes since yesterday?” 

“No, just in the past couple of months, since you've been back. You know... any kind of... family changes.” 

Emma puts her cup down. “You know about the baby.” 

Ruby's posture relaxes immediately. “Oh, good, so you know too? I thought you must, by now, even if she hadn't told you. If she's puking anywhere near as much as she did when she was pregnant with you, you'd have to have figured it out.”

“Wait,” Emma says. “If she told you she was pregnant, why wouldn't she have told you that I knew?” 

Ruby shakes her head. “Oh, she didn't tell me, I smelled it.”

Emma, mid-sip, nearly chokes on her coffee, but somehow manages to swallow it down. “Oh my God, how is that even a thing?”

Ruby just shrugs. “It's... there are chemical changes. I knew pretty much immediately, and I was waiting for her to say something, but I think... so much has happened, she must have forgotten that I knew before.” 

“You mean with me? You smelled me coming too, huh?” Emma feels her face scrunch up into one of her more ridiculous expressions. Every day, some new impossible thing becomes true, and she doesn't see how she'll ever get used to it. 

Ruby smiles. “I was the first to know about you. Before James, even. I knew.” 

“Oh,” is all Emma says for a moment, as Ruby appears lost in a memory that to some parts of her mind seems very recent. “Listen, I'm sure she'll tell you soon. As soon as they decide to start telling people, she'll want you to know.” 

“Oh, I know,” Ruby says, waving a hand in front of her. “So, are you excited about the baby?”

There is only one right answer, only one thing her mother's best friend expects her to say, and so Emma does her best to deliver it. “Yeah, of course! I can't wait.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

They decide that Henry will spend weekends with Regina for now, though the schedule will probably change once school starts again. Emma thinks that eventually, they'll trade him off at equal intervals, and she knows she'll hate every day that he's not with her. She asks him if he wants a party with his classmates for his birthday, but he says he'd rather spend it with her, and his grandparents. “And... my mom, too,” he adds, and then pauses for a moment. “But not at the same time, I guess. 

Emma reaches over to ruffle his hair. “You know, your mom and I get along fine, now. Mostly.” 

He looks at her skeptically, but then says, “I meant Mom and Grandma.” 

“Ah,” Emma says, fiddling with the dial on the toaster she's just barely managed not to break yet. “Yeah, you're right about that one.” Regina had helped them get home, and in return Snow had agreed that for Henry's sake, Regina was not to be harmed so long as she did not harm anyone else. It's as close to a reconciliation as they're ever likely to get. “Maybe you can spend half the day here and then half with your mom?” 

Emma wonders how difficult it will be for Regina not to see her son first thing on his birthday. She tries to imagine him on each of the birthdays she missed and then has to stop when she feels a lump forming in her throat. He's still a child, she tells herself. It could be worse. He could be 28. 

“She usually makes me a cake,” Henry says. “Do you think she'll still make it this year?” 

“I'm sure she will. Why wouldn't she?” 

Henry looks down. “Because things are so different now. I know I'm gonna stay there sometimes now, but it's not... it's not like when I lived with her all the time.” 

Emma puts her hand on his shoulder. “It's okay,” she says. “It's okay to miss what you had before.” 

His young face scrunches up like he's trying to force himself not to be upset. “No, it's not.” 

“Yes, it is. Henry, it's... she's your mom.” 

“But I can't miss anything from before, because I didn't have you before, and everyone was cursed, and my mom... she wasn't trying to be good like she is now.”

He looks so torn, and Emma feels like a jerk. Only she could turn a conversation about the kid's birthday into something that upsets him. It's humbling, constantly, that she's not even the best mother out of a family that includes an evil queen and a woman who sent her newborn baby away in a magic tree. “Hey, listen. You know that... you know that I care about my mom, right? A lot?” 

Henry looks down at his hands. “Yeah. You love her.” 

“Yes,” she says. “But Mary Margaret was my best friend. Sometimes I miss that.” 

Henry shakes his head. “It's still her, though. You don't have to miss her.” 

“It's still her, in a lot of ways, yes. But having a mom isn't the same as having a best friend. So sometimes, I miss having my best friend. That doesn't mean that I don't love my mom. Or that I would give her up.” 

Henry thinks for a moment. “What does this have to do with my mom and cake?” 

“Well,” Emma says, tapping her fingers against the kitchen counter. “I know it hasn't always been easy, with your mom, but I also know that before the book, you had a lot of good memories with her. So... even if it's better, now that you and me and your grandparents get to be together too, it doesn't mean you're not allowed to miss how close you and your mom were before.” 

“This isn't like what I thought it would be. Breaking the curse. I thought...” He looks at her, frowning and apologetic. “I thought after it was broken, everything would be fixed.” 

She pulls him into a hug and he holds on tightly, clutching her almost the way he had when she'd come back through the portal. He's still young enough to believe in happy endings, in everything tied up neatly by the last page. 

Emma knows, when you break something, you're left with the pieces. 

“Henry,” she says, rubbing his back. “We're going to be fine. Anything that's not fixed, we'll fix it.” 

He has so much faith in her that he doesn't even question it. Emma's not sure if that makes it better or worse. 

“It's really good cake,” he says, still hanging onto her. “You could probably stay and have some if you wanted.” 

* 

Henry wakes up early on his birthday, and pushes gently at Emma's shoulder until she opens her eyes. “Happy birthday, kid,” she says as she props herself up, and he grins widely at her. 

“Can I open my presents before breakfast?” 

Emma gets the feeling that Regina is strictly a breakfast-before-presents kind of mother, and having rarely had presents on her own birthday, she can't quite relate to her son's enthusiasm. She doesn't see the harm in indulging him, though. It's his birthday, and she wants everything about it to make him happy. Bleary-eyed, she follows him down the stairs where he zeroes in immediately on the pile of presents she'd pulled out of her mother's closet and left on the table after he went to bed the night before. 

“Cool!” he says, already ripping the paper off of the first of two exorbitantly expensive Lego sets, as Emma pads into the kitchen where her mother has thankfully already made coffee. 

“Morning,” Emma says sleepily as her mother smiles at her. 

“Happy birthday, Henry!” Snow calls out in his direction, as David joins him at the table and pulls him into a one-armed hug that forces Henry to pause his enthusiastic tearing of gift wrap for a few seconds. 

Emma drinks coffee with Snow as Henry exclaims over each new gift. When he's done, he puts a new DVD on in the living room and settles down in front of the coffee table with superhero-themed Lego pieces spread out in front of him. He enlists Emma and David's help in constructing the Helicarrier, and they squint at the instructions and poke at the pieces ineffectually while Snow makes Hulk pancakes with green food coloring. 

“Guys,” Henry says eventually. “I don't really think you're helping.” 

Emma didn't have a lot of toys, growing up in the system, and her father probably spent his childhood playing with sticks and stones and sheep. They look at each other over Henry's head and start laughing in the same moment. Emma picks up the little Hulk figure and knocks him into a pile of bricks. “Hulk smash,” she says, and David in turn pushes over the tower of Legos he'd put together that had nothing to do with what Henry was building. 

Henry purses his lips, but Emma and David grin at him and his mouth twists into a smile without his permission. Emma's glad they can give him this, something simple and happy after all the changes he's been through in the last year. 

She drives him over to Regina's house in the afternoon, and Regina opens the front door before they've even rung the doorbell. 

“Henry,” she says, pulling him to her. “Happy birthday.” There's enough emotion in her voice that Henry looks embarrassed as he hugs her back, and Emma hovers awkwardly a few steps behind. He'd promised her cake, before, but she hadn't actually been invited by Regina yet. 

“Are you coming in?” Henry asks, looking over his shoulder at Emma as his mother leads him inside. 

“Oh, I...” she says, taking a step backwards. 

“Come inside, Emma,” Regina tells her, sounding weary but not unkind. “It's not as if he'll eat the whole cake by himself.” 

Emma follows them in and watches as Regina keeps her hand on Henry's shoulder. She realizes, when she looks at them walking next to each other, how much he's grown since the night he'd shown up at her apartment asking for juice and cooperation and faith. She doesn't know why she's here, why Regina would allow her time with Henry to belong to someone else as well. 

But Regina has surprised her in a lot of ways, lately. 

It's hours until dinner time and so for the second time that day, Henry is allowed to open presents without sitting through a meal first. He's thrilled as he tears into them, but this time Emma watches Regina instead. She looks at him as if he's all that matters in the world, as if these moments might slip away from her entirely if she takes her eyes off of him for even a second. 

Children change you, Emma knows. She wonders who Regina was, in Storybrooke, all those years before he was born. A witch without magic, who was just as lonely here as she had ever been. 

Emma wonders if her mother ever felt like she had after Henry was born and they'd taken him away, like part of her was gone. 

She wants to ask Regina about the curse, about time passing. She wants to ask about magic and false lives—the things everyone remembers that didn't happen, and the things they didn't remember that did. She wants to ask her mother if they're any clearer now, all the days that the curse swallowed up, and what she was doing while Emma was growing up without her. 

Henry wraps his arms around Regina tightly. “Thanks, Mom,” he says, and she closes her eyes and strokes his hair and looks almost exactly how Emma's felt ever since the curse broke- some imprecise mix of happy and sad that she can't give a name to.

“Are you having a good day, Henry?” Regina asks him, and he nods as she lets go of him.

“Yeah. It's different, but good. I'm glad I get to see you today, too.” 

Regina reaches for his face, sweeps her thumb over his cheek. “I'm glad you're here. You're growing up so fast, Henry. I don't think I realized how fast.” 

Henry shrugs. “It doesn't seem that fast to me.” 

“It's fast,” Emma says. “That's one thing your mom and I agree on, kid. You're growing up too fast.”

“We agree on more than just that, I think,” Regina says. 

Henry looks back and forth between them. “Because... because you're trying to be good now?” he asks. 

“Yes,” she says quietly. She'd say more if Emma weren't in the room, probably, but Henry seems to understand. Emma understands, at least, that Regina would give up anyone, anything, any magic, if Henry will trust her again. 

Emma and Regina meet each other's eyes and Emma thinks someday this might be normal, someday the three of them in a room together won't feel like mismatched pieces. She hopes so, she hopes something in her life will make sense, because no matter how much they love her, mismatched pieces are all she and her parents will ever be. 

* 

Emma's parents move out of the apartment a week before school starts. She thinks she'll be fine, that it won't matter, but when everything that made it _Mary Margaret's apartment_ is packed away in a stack of cardboard boxes, Emma sits on the couch (Snow's leaving the couch) by herself and feels like a child for not wanting her mother to go. 

The movers are on their way, and once they've come and gone, it will be Emma and Henry's apartment. She doesn't notice Snow come into the room until she sits down next to her. 

Emma expects her to say something, but she doesn't, just links her arm through Emma's and sits with her quietly. 

“Hey,” Emma says eventually. 

“Hey,” Snow says, almost a whisper. She leans against Emma and sighs. 

“Do you, um. Do you want to talk?” Emma asks. 

“No,” her mother answers. “No, just this.” 

* 

The new house isn't huge, but has plenty of space for a family of three. Half the town crowds inside for the housewarming party, though, and Emma finds herself feeling more claustrophobic by the minute. She's not sure where Henry's ended up, but she spots her mother across the room, swaying on her feet as Ruby pounces on her, wrapping her in an exuberant hug. 

Ruby's excited squeal cuts through the jumble of other voices in the room, and Snow laughs and hugs her back. When they part, Ruby places her hand on Snow's stomach and looks at her friend with such love in her eyes, and Emma can imagine that it looked almost exactly like this the first time. 

Snow looks up and right at Emma, and her smile is so content that Emma forgets, for just a moment, that there's anything at all to be sad about. She smiles back. 

She finds her father on the back porch with Kathryn, who's clasping his hands and gazing at him fondly, which would be incredibly weird if Emma didn't know there was about a negative twelve-thousand percent chance of David cheating the other way around. “Oh, Emma!” Kathryn says as Emma approaches them. “David just told me about the baby.” 

Emma nods toward the house. “Cat's out of the bag with Ruby, too.” 

“It really is wonderful,” Kathryn says to David. “I'm so happy for you.” 

David grins. “I think we might announce it to everyone tonight, but of course I'd have to go back inside first.” 

Emma looks back at the house full of people. “This is the first housewarming party I've been to, but I feel like you're probably not supposed to hide from it if it's your own house being warmed,” she says. 

“Your mother's better at this kind of thing,” he says, shrugging. “She's the one who grew up attending huge social events every other week.” 

“And besides,” Kathryn adds. “How could you resist slipping away to discuss such scintillating topics as our divorce settlement?” 

“Oh,” Emma says, startled. “Oh, right, you guys are still-” 

“Not quite divorced, by the laws of this world,” Kathryn tells her. “By our own, I'm still married to Frederick, and your father to your mother, but... if we're going to live in this place, we can't completely ignore its rules.” 

“It's so strange to think...” David starts, and then shakes his head. “To think that here, my wife has never been my wife at all.” 

“And to think how many times I might have passed Fred on the street and never known...” Kathryn looks at Emma. “We're all so grateful to you, for breaking this curse. For bringing our memories back.” 

Emma looks down. _Don't thank me, thank the special destiny I had no say in._ “I'm glad you and Frederick are happy.” 

“Blissfully,” Kathryn says, her eyes shining. “In fact, I think I'd better go inside and see if I can't find that handsome knight of mine stuffing his face somewhere. You should come, David. Tell everyone about that new little prince or princess who's coming into the world.” 

“Right behind you,” he says, as Kathryn leans in to kiss him on the cheek.

She disappears inside the house, and Emma stands next to her father. “I forgot that you and Snow aren't, like, actually married. You seem pretty married.” 

“Well we _have_ done it twice,” he says, grinning as he nudges her with his elbow. 

“Right. Been there, done that.” 

“It's almost done, with Kathryn and me, and then your mom and I can get married. Again.” He chuckles. “I can't believe that out of three weddings, the only one that counts here is the one that never really happened.” 

“Do you remember it?” Emma asks. 

“Sort of. I never quite got all of my memories back. The fake ones. I think it's... I think it's like that for everyone. I remember things from that day, but it's as if it was a movie I watched, not something that happened to me. There's no emotion tied to it.” 

“Makes for an amicable divorce, I guess.” 

He smiles, and looks up at the sky. “Kathryn is a dear friend to me, but we were never meant to be married. We were never...” he stops, and looks at Emma. “A lot of things went wrong.” 

It's the understatement of the century, but it also sounds a bit like an apology. Emma looks at her father, shrugs, and opens her mouth to tell him that they're all doing the best they can, but that's when Snow opens the back door and interrupts her. 

“There you both are,” she says. “Come back inside, it's time for the big announcement.” 

* 

Emma stands with her parents and Henry for the royal proclamation. Snow is glowing with excitement, and Henry bounces just a little on the balls of his feet, each in stark contrast to Emma who would rather slip into the crowd where no one's eyes would be on her at all. 

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” Snow says. “We're so glad you could be here to celebrate with us, and we're so, so grateful that so many of you have been reunited with your loved ones, as we have. We were lost for 28 long years, but everything changed when our precious daughter, Emma, came back to us. It's because of her that I'm able to stand here in front of you tonight, with my family, and tell you all the wonderful news that it's been so very difficult to keep secret. Not only is our family together again, at last...” Snow pauses, beaming at her guests. “It's also growing. We're expecting our second child.” 

The room erupts instantly in a chorus of congratulations, and if Emma felt claustrophobic before, it's nothing compared to how she feels now. But Henry leans over and puts his arms around her, and it's a big job for a little boy, but in that moment he's the only anchor she has.


	5. Chapter 5

The school year and Snow's second trimester start at the first of September. Henry moves up a grade, and so, finally, do the other children, which means that Snow has her first completely new class of students in 29 years. It sets her off crying again, of course. 

“They're growing up!” she says over the phone, her voice cracking pitifully. 

It's 6:00 in the morning, and Emma didn't intend to be awake for another hour. “Well, yeah,” she says, rubbing at her eyes but making no move to throw back her covers and start the day. “But I mean. That's good, right? The curse is broken, they get to grow up now.” 

“Yes,” Snow says, sniffling in a way that really does make Emma feel bad for her, even if she'd rather be asleep. “Yes, I know, this is what we all wanted. I'm just going to miss them. They were my class for almost three decades.” 

“I'm sure you'll still see them, though. And you're a great teacher, it's not like they're all just going to simultaneously forget about you.” Emma rolls onto her side, and blinks against the sun streaming in from the blinds she'd forgotten to close. 

“I know. It's just that... oh, it happens in the blink of an eye, doesn't it? Suddenly they're grown and there's just... there's nothing you can do. You can't get that time back once it's passed.” Snow's breath hitches, and they're not talking about her students anymore. 

Emma closes her eyes and presses the phone close to her ear. _It's okay_ , she wants to say, but it's not. “Your new class is going to love you,” she says instead. 

“I hope so. Even though I'll be abandoning them for maternity leave.” 

“I really doubt they're going to feel _abandoned_. I'm sure they'll get someone great to cover your class.” 

They're both quiet for a long moment. “I'm sorry I woke you up,” Snow says. 

“It's fine,” Emma says, and she's tired but it's not a lie. 

“I know I can talk to your father about anything, and I do, but sometimes I just want to talk to you instead.” 

Emma remembers Mary Margaret, how she didn't mind when Emma didn't know the right things to say. “I'm not mad that you woke me up. I promise. You can call me anytime.” 

“Thank you,” Snow says quietly, and no matter how Emma feels about the baby, about how she can never be a daughter in the way that they want, she still wants to hug her mother when she sounds like this. 

“How's your, um. How's your puking?” Emma asks. 

“Oh,” Snow says. “Not so bad, anymore. Not like it was with you, at the very least.” 

Emma sits up in bed, finally. A decent night's sleep has been a thing of the past for a while now, anyway. “I made you sick?” 

“Wretchedly. Though I didn't love you any less for it, of course. My mother...” Snow goes quiet for a moment and Emma just waits. Snow has never mentioned her mother to Emma before. “There was a noblewoman, one of my mother's friends, who became pregnant and just carried on as if nothing had changed. My mother said she envied her, and when I asked what she meant, she told me she became very sick when she was pregnant with me. Bedridden for the last three months. And I thought, how awful. How awful that I'd done that to my mother, who I adored. But when I tried to apologize to her, she took my face in her hands and said... 'No, my dear Snow. Don't ever be sorry for that. You are my treasure, and you were worth those small hardships and more.'” 

“Yeah. That sounds about right.” When Emma looks at Henry now, she knows he was worth all of it, worth those lonely months she spent terrified of what would happen to her baby after he was born, and that gaping, empty feeling once he was gone. 

“I haven't thought about her for a very long time,” Snow says. “I got so many memories back at once that I think some of them haven't had a chance to rise to the surface yet.” She sounds like she's crying again, and Emma's caught between intensely uncomfortable and really, really wanting to hug her again. 

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring all that up.” 

“No, no, don't be sorry. It's nice to remember her now.” Snow sniffles just a little. “Anyway, my point is that I loved you right from the start, no matter how sick you made me.”

Emma still doesn't know how to react to that kind of plainly-spoken love, but she does the best she can. “Do you want to have dinner tonight? Like a family thing, the four of us?” 

“I'd like that,” Snow says. “I really would.” 

* 

Henry fights getting out of bed for school the way he used to rail against everything Regina did, and Emma feels abruptly discouraged at the realization that having Henry live with her means sometimes she has to be the bad cop. 

He's eating cereal with a scowl on his face when there's a knock at the door, and Emma opens it to reveal Regina, looking wildly out of place in the doorway of a home she had carefully avoided for almost thirty years. 

“Oh,” Emma says. “Hi.” 

“I'm sorry to show up so early,” Regina says, glancing at Emma's untamed hair and bare feet. “I wanted to wish Henry good luck on his first day of school. I thought I could walk him to the bus stop.” 

“ _I can walk myself,”_ he'd told Emma the night before as he reluctantly filled his backpack with new notebooks and pencils, but today he doesn't protest. “Hi, Mom,” he says as he gets up to put his bowl in the sink. “I'm almost ready, I'll go get my stuff.” 

“You know, if you had called first, I wouldn't have said no,” Emma says, after Henry climbs up the stairs to his bedroom. 

Regina steps inside and Emma closes the door. “I wasn't aware I needed permission,” Regina says evenly. 

“You don't. I just meant... nevermind,” Emma says, sighing. “Is he always so cranky about getting up for school? I thought he liked school.” 

Regina smirks at her, but there's something else there, like she would have given anything to have been the one to drag Henry out of bed that morning. “It's not always fun, Emma. You don't get to just show up and take him for ice cream and then leave it to me to make sure he's done his homework, now.” 

“I know,” Emma says, and tries not to sound defensive. This is what she wanted, wasn't it? She wanted to be Henry's mom, she wanted to feel like she could do this, be part of a family. But all the time she finds herself relieved to remember that for Henry's sake, his other mother would never allow her to fail. “Look, I know that you wish I weren't a part of Henry's life-” 

“I don't wish that,” Regina interrupts her. 

“Right,” Emma says, running a hand through her hair. 

“I did. For a long time. But things are different now, and I know that... without you, I would have lost him. One way or another.” 

Emma doesn't have time to respond before Henry comes thundering down the stairs, backpack slung over one shoulder. “See you later, Emma,” he says, hugging her quickly. “Come on, Mom.” 

Emma watches them go, raising her hand to wave goodbye although neither of them are looking. “Bye, kid,” she says. “I'll see you after school.” 

She drinks coffee by herself at the kitchen counter and decides she can be late for work. This is the first morning in a long time that she's spent in this apartment alone, she realizes—and though the circumstances are better this time than last, as this time her mother's not in jail, it still feels off. 

When she gets to the station her father looks, for about half a second, as if he's going to frown and tell her she's late, and Emma remembers for the twentieth time how Ruby had asked her if she really thought it was a good idea to be her dad's boss. But David just says good morning in a perfectly neutral tone of voice, and smiles at her the way he always does, like he's happy to see her, like he loves her even though she's not his baby anymore. 

But she was never going to be, for him. He never meant to come through the wardrobe with her, the way Snow did—he was forced to accept well before she was born that he would never see her grow up. He was always going to be a father to a grown stranger. This new baby is the second chance he never counted on, and Emma is exactly what he expected. 

“Sorry I'm late,” she says, and if she looks distracted, he's kind enough not to mention it. 

* 

Snow's newly rounded belly makes Emma remember her own, how she would rub her palm over it, missing Neal and hating him at once. She pushes the memory away as she stands behind Snow in her classroom. The children are at lunch, but Snow remains at her desk in front of her computer, engrossed. 

“You know you should be eating for two now, not zero,” Emma says. 

“Oh,” Snow says, barely glancing at Emma before turning back to the computer screen. “Emma. Did you know that some people don't vaccinate their children?” 

Emma leans over to look at the monitor where Snow is scrolling through a conversation on some kind of forum for moms. It's the kind of thing Emma would never have sought out when she was pregnant, even if she hadn't been in prison. “Yeah, that's like a thing now, I think.” 

“Why on Earth?” Snow says, mystified, shaking her head. 

“Well, some people think it can cause autism,” Emma says as she stands up straight again.

Snow's hand stills on the mouse and she's quiet for a moment before saying, “I think I would rather ensure that my child stay alive.” 

“I think that's... basically the opposing argument, yeah.” 

“Back home there were so many children who died of illnesses that we didn't know how to prevent, that we didn't have the medicine to cure.” Snow sighs and it sounds shaky and Emma doesn't know what to do. “They don't write about that in the fairy tales. That doesn't make it into the stories, that there was so much in our world that had nothing to do with magic.” 

Emma places her hand on Snow's shoulder because she doesn't know what to say, and Snow reaches up to put her own hand over Emma's. 

“Were you vaccinated?” Snow asks suddenly, turning around to look at her. Twenty-eight year's worth of a mother's worries, coming to her in stages.

She's a lifetime too late but it's not her fault, Emma remembers, it's not all her fault. Snow loved her, Snow wanted her. “Don't worry, they gave me all my shots.” 

Snow is happy now, more often than not, but sometimes her face clouds over in an instant with the pain of their lost years, as if she can only grieve for them for a few moments at a time. “I do worry. About all that time,” Snow says, but Emma doesn't want to talk about that and Snow must realize it. She turns back to the computer. “I don't understand half of what these people are talking about. What's a part-time S-A-H-M?” 

“I think that's stay at home mom?” Emma suggests. 

“How can you be a part-time stay at home mom?” Snow asks. “You either have a job outside your home or you don't, right?” 

Emma shrugs, and sits down on the edge of Snow's desk. “I'm the wrong person to ask.” Like mother, like daughter, they are out of their element. 

Snow clicks the window closed after a moment and looks at Emma. “Sometimes I don't think I'm ready for this.” 

Emma looks down at her boots and decides it would be all right to be honest. “I know what you mean,” she says. 

Snow puts her hand over Emma's on the desk between them and runs her thumb over it softly. “Everything's happening so quickly. We had just barely gotten home, we didn't even get a chance to figure out what our lives were going to be now, and everything changed again. This child is a blessing, but I—I spent 28 years in a haze, when I should have been with you. And now you're grown, and I've never _been_ a mother. I don't know what I'm doing.” 

“Nobody does, the first time,” Emma says, and she can't look at her mother's face, at the woman who should have been there to care for her. “I don't know what I'm doing with Henry half the time. But I'm figuring it out, and so will you. And look, we're not alone, right?” It's something Emma can still barely get through her head, that this is permanent. That she's too old to be sent back and that they never would, anyway, her real family. It doesn't make up for the years of being loved by no one, but it's _something._  

“No, we're not alone,” Snow says. She stands and kisses Emma's cheek, and Emma remembers long stretches of time when no one touched her at all. “Let's have lunch. The baby's hungry.” 

* 

Emma sits in Regina's kitchen in the middle of the day and doesn't know why she's there. Regina's baking brownies for Henry, who is at school, and she invites Emma inside because she always does, now. Emma watches her quietly, the way she knows the recipe without having to look at it, the way she can make things the way Henry likes them. 

Regina doesn't pay much attention to Emma, and Emma wonders how it is they've gotten to this point, where she's become such an inoffensive fixture in Regina's life that Regina can simply carry on with what she'd been doing before Emma arrived, barely glancing in her direction. 

The brownies go in the oven and Emma asks, finally, “Hey, you got Henry vaccinated, right?” 

Regina turns to face her. “Of course I did. I'm not an idiot.” 

“Right,” Emma says. “It's just that Snow was reading this thing online, and I... wondered.” 

Regina raises one perfect eyebrow. “Don't tell me that she's allowed herself to be manipulated into leaving her child vulnerable to a host of preventable illnesses by a horde of panicked parents spouting inconclusive research.” 

“No,” Emma says, blinking. “She's basically on the same page you are, I think.” 

Regina stares at her for a moment. “I suppose there's a first time for everything. But yes, I had Henry vaccinated, just as I did everything a mother should do to take care of her child.” 

“I wasn't trying to suggest that you didn't.” 

Regina's hands lay flat on the counter and Emma wonders if it's to keep them steady. 

“She has so many questions about having a baby, you know, actually _having_ the baby, after it's born, and I can't answer them, and I can't tell her that I don't want to talk about it at all, that I don't want to think about what this baby is going to mean for us when it's here. I don't know how to fit into this idea she has of me, that both of them have of me, that we're going to be fine if we just keep finding each other.” Emma lets it spill out of her even knowing that Regina doesn't want to hear it. Who can she tell without it hurting them, if not Regina? 

A silence settles between them as Regina looks out the window into the back yard that Henry hasn't played in for many months now. “You're not... a bad person, for feeling the way you do.” 

Emma isn't sure Regina's a fair judge of who is or isn't a bad person, but it hardly seems to matter right then. “I don't know how to be okay, the way everyone expects me to be. I don't know what that feels like, to just be okay.” 

Regina's voice, when she answers, is kinder than Emma expects, though her words might not be. “If that's what Snow expects of you, then she's even more oblivious and self-involved than I thought.” 

Emma's quiet laugh surprises her. “Don't talk about my mom that way.” 

Regina looks back at her, straight faced, and says, “Emma, the fact that I'm no longer actively pursuing your mother's demise doesn't mean that I have to speak kindly of her.” 

“Yeah, well. Thanks for that cease fire, I guess. I'd like to keep her around, you know, despite the fact that this whole thing is a complete mess.” 

Regina's mixing bowl goes into the sink and Emma remembers one of the foster homes where things weren't so bad, where her foster mother used to bake sometimes and let Emma lick the bowl. “A little uncooked batter never hurts,” she'd say, patting Emma's shoulder. “Don't let anyone tell you different.” Emma doesn't imagine Snow would have done a lot of baking, in the palace, but Mary Margaret might have. Maybe the new baby will sit in her parents' kitchen, eating cookie dough, blissfully unaware that there's any way to grow up but surrounded by love. 

“Life is messy,” Regina says. “We may come from fairytales that wrap up neatly on the page, but you know by now that the storybooks leave out a great deal of the truth.” 

Emma considers this carefully and then can't help but say, “Maleficent did turn out to be a dragon, though.” 

Mouth twitching, Regina says, “I didn't say none of it was true.” 

“Anyway. I know this isn't really a conversation you want to be having.”

Regina glances at the oven timer. “If it were repellent enough, I wouldn't be having it.” 

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Emma asks. 

“Because, you were right,” Regina says. “We're Henry's parents, and it will only hurt him if the people he loves are hurting each other.” She looks down, then, as if she's been presumptuous to count herself among those that Henry loves.

“He does love you,” Emma says. “No matter what he said or did last year. I don't believe he ever stopped loving you.” 

“I could ask you why you're being so nice to me, now.” 

“Because you're not so bad, Regina.” 

Regina laughs, sounding genuinely surprised, and Emma rolls her eyes. 

“You were. But you're trying to change, for Henry, and... what good will it do if I don't give you a chance, right?” 

“Some would say I've had my chances.” 

“Some,” Emma agrees. “Not me.” 

They don't say much, after that. The brownies come out of the oven and Emma thinks about the baby again, this child who can make her parents happy, and Regina just lets her be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inevitably, I've caught up to myself. As soon as I started posting I stopped making enough progress, so in all likelihood the updates are going to stop coming on a regular weekly schedule, but I'll go as fast as I can (don't worry, I'm 100% incapable of rushing myself.) Hopefully those of you who care will keep caring! I care very tenderly about this story and I know exactly how it ends, so don't worry, it will be finished. Tenderly.


	6. Chapter 6

The boundary is broken in the first days of October. It's fairy dust and magic, and Emma doesn't understand the finer details of it any better than her father does, but the point is that now, Snow and David—like Emma, like Regina—have chosen to stay. 

“Not that we'll never go _anywhere_ ,” Snow explains. “There's a whole world out there, and I haven't seen any of it. But this is our home, now. No matter how it became that way. This will always be the place we found our family again.” 

The notion of a prison becoming a home is not one that's easy for Emma to understand, but she's not surprised by their decision to remain in Storybrooke. They all hold each other in place, now. Snow and David will stay because Emma will stay; Emma will stay because she will not take Henry away from Regina; Regina will stay because Henry would not leave with her if it meant leaving Emma. 

Emma expects Storybrooke to become a ghost town in the days that follow, but much of the population, like Emma's parents, are reluctant to leave immediately or for good. Mr. Gold disappears with Belle only hours after it's deemed safe, and over the next week there are others who pack suitcases or box up whole lives to carry over the line, but everyone who matters to Emma's family stays right where they are.

Ruby had once longed for big cities, for freedom, but now she is Red as well, whose freedom comes with the full moon, and who has no desire to be far away from the best friend she loves as a sister. 

“Have you crossed the line yet?” Snow asks. It's early and the diner isn't busy, so Ruby sits in a booth with Emma and her parents, hands wrapped around a coffee mug.

Ruby smiles. “Only in the forest. I went running last night.” 

Emma pours syrup on her pancakes as her mother, across the table, leans forward with an unfamiliar sparkle in her eyes. “What was it like?” 

Ruby's grin widens. “It was perfect. It's... for a second it's like it's just the same on the other side, but then suddenly you realize how _big_ it feels, and you know you can just keep going, and going, and nothing can stop you. We're really free, Snow. It's really over.”

“Free,” Snow says, closing her eyes. “Oh, Ruby.” Her hand goes to her stomach immediately as if she's realizing that now she truly can give this baby everything. She can give her child the world. Emma eats her pancakes quietly. The world doesn't mean much, compared to what the baby has already. 

“So you remained a wolf, outside of Storybrooke?” David asks. 

Ruby nods. “It's a different kind of magic, I guess, than witchcraft or fairy dust. Or maybe breaking the boundary means we take our magic with us now.”

David looks at Snow. “Which means that Mr. Gold is out in the world right now with all the power of the Dark One.”

“Have you heard from Belle?” Snow asks. 

Ruby stares down into her coffee for a long moment before she looks back up at her friend. “She hasn't mentioned magic. They're in New York, looking for Gold's son. She doesn't know if he'll ever want to come back here, and she'll stay with him, because she loves him... I told her she can do whatever she wants in this life and she said she wants to be with him, wherever he goes. Even if she deserves better, he's what she wants.” 

“Do you think it's true love, between them?” David asks, and Emma's glad her mouth is full or else she wouldn't be able to hide her grimace. 

“I don't think it matters,” Ruby says. “She believes they're meant to be together. I'm not sure I'll ever see her again.” 

Snow reaches across the table to put her hand over Ruby's. “I'm sorry.” 

Ruby shakes her head. “It's all right. She sounds happy, and she's on an adventure, so it's all right.” 

It's quiet for a moment, and Emma's about to make an excuse to leave, when Ruby says, “Tell me about your class, Snow. Let's talk about something nice.” 

“Oh,” Snow says, her face brightening. She chatters easily about the kids and how remarkable they are, how resilient and how precious, and Emma lets it wash over her, how much Snow the teacher still sounds like Mary Margaret. 

Before Snow leaves for school, she throws her arms around Ruby, who tells her, “Don't worry about me. I still have you, right? You're not so bad.” 

Snow holds on to her friend and says, “Yes. You have me. I'm not going anywhere.” 

* 

Emma drives to the station with David. “You were quiet at breakfast,” he says. 

She taps her fingers against the steering wheel. “Just thinking.” 

“Your mom always tells me to be careful not to hurt myself.” 

She laughs, just a little, and glances over at him. 

“She's joking, of course.” 

Emma doesn't know what to make of the fact that it sounds a great deal like something Regina might say to her. “Do you think we should be worried about Gold?” 

“I don't know. We're no match for his magic. Hardly anybody is.” 

“Is Regina?” 

“She is, but... we have no way of knowing what side she would take, if it came to that,” he says, as if he doesn't understand at all, as if he hasn't been paying attention. 

“Our side, David,” she says, stopping at a red light and turning to stare at him incredulously. “She would take our side.” 

“Emma, I know you want to believe that she's changed, for Henry's sake, but you can't just gloss over everything she's done in the past.” 

“I'm not. Believe me, I'm not.” 

David sighs. “You don't know her like we do, Emma.”

Emma frowns and barely resists stomping on the gas pedal as the light changes. “You don't know her like _I_ do.”

“Snow wanted her to change, a long time ago. There was a time when we wanted to believe she could be different, but once you have that darkness inside you, there's no coming back from it.” 

Emma scowls as she pulls into a parking spot at the station. “She's my kid's mom, David. I have to believe that she's worth some kind of redemption.” 

“She tried to kill you. And it almost killed Henry.” 

“Yeah, and then the curse broke, and I went through a hat with Mary Margaret, and Regina helped bring us home. She didn't have to. Look, she's trying to be the kind of parent that Henry deserves. That doesn't mean she has to like us, but it does mean that she won't try to hurt us anymore. Even if it's just for him.” 

David unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the door. “I hope you're right.” 

“Even if we never forgive her, Henry wants _so badly_ to be able to,” Emma tells him as she gets out of the car. “So as long as she's trying... I have to keep trying to trust her. I have to do that for him.” 

They look at each other over the hood of the car, each of their mouths set in a straight line, until David says, “You have to understand that it's difficult for your mother and me to even... fathom trusting her.” 

“So trust _me,_ David. Can you do that?”

It still doesn't make sense to Emma, the way she can ask him for something and watch his eyes go soft immediately as he answers, “Of course,” as if telling her _no_ isn't even in his list of options. She had barely known David before, not the way she'd known Mary Margaret. Emma and her mother had loved each other as family before it turned out they _were,_ but it's hard for her to understand, the way David had loved her from the first moment he looked at her and knew she was his daughter. 

“Okay,” she says, as she feels some of the tension in her body start to uncoil. “Okay.” 

He follows her inside, and as she sits down at her desk, tells her, “I know that none of this is easy for you, Emma. If it seems like we don't, it's just that... we want very much for this to work out. I think Snow is so afraid to entertain the idea, even for a second, that this might not be the family you wanted.”

“David,” she says, and stares at her desk, the messy piles of paper and the ancient computer. 

“When we were young,” he says—as if they're not still, as if those 28 years had taken from them as much as they had from Emma, “I think we believed that once the curse broke, every hardship would be over. I know now how foolish that was. Snow and I are just trying to figure this out, same as you.” 

“It's not that you're not what I wanted,” she says, and she doesn't know when the thought of hurting David Nolan's feelings became quite so uncomfortable. “It's just that after I was about ten years old I learned not to want family at all. So it's just... taking me a while, to get used to you as David, my father who's almost the same age I am, not just David, the guy my roommate had an affair with.” 

She looks up at him, finally, and he smiles at her, sad and hopeful at once. “Do you think you'll ever call me Dad?” 

“I don't know,” she admits, but she's brave and holds his gaze, and he doesn't look away either. 

He reaches for her, his hand brushing gently over her hair. “It's all right. If you don't, it's all right.” 

* 

“Come to the line with me,” Emma says at Regina's front door. 

Regina is perfectly dressed and put together as always, though as far as Emma knows, she hardly leaves her house anymore. Emma knows she can't pretend to be busy—on the days Henry's not with her, or when he's at school, she has nothing to do but try and fill the hours. “What?” she asks, looking tired, like she'd been up with Henry after a nightmare, or like she's simply feeling the years take their toll on her after such a long time resisting them.

“Have you crossed it yet?” Emma asks. 

“No,” Regina answers. “And I can't imagine why you'd need me to. It won't have any effect on me now, if it ever would have in the first place.” 

“Regina, that's not—that's not why. God, you think I would just... casually ask you to come out there with me and then push you over the line just to see what happens?” 

“It's not a very well thought-out plan, but in my defense, many of yours haven't been,” Regina says, but there's something in her voice, in her unconcerned expression, that tells Emma no. No, Regina doesn't think she'll be betrayed this way, not by Emma. 

“I need to know if your magic works outside of Storybrooke,” Emma says. “That's all.”

Regina takes a step back. “No. No, I promised Henry I wouldn't use magic.” 

“You used it to bring us home.”

“Would you rather I hadn't?” Regina asks sharply, and when Emma doesn't answer, she continues. “Yes. I used magic to bring you home. I don't regret it, and I imagine for Henry it falls under some kind of list of acceptable uses, but the truth is that any magic is dangerous for me. I spent weeks afterwards, trying to quell the urge to use it again and just barely succeeding. Each use of magic brings me closer to a fall that I don't know if I can come back from.” 

Emma shoves her hands in her pockets and remembers, as she does sometimes, that her mother has truly no idea what Regina's life is like. “I wouldn't let anything happen to you,” she says, looking down. 

“You wouldn't have any control over it,” Regina says wearily, as if she's waiting, just waiting, for that darkness to take hold of her again. 

“It didn't feel dark,” Emma says. “Before, when we made the hat work. It felt okay.”

“Your magic is good. Natural. It's not like mine,” Regina explains, impatience or jealousy making her voice hard.

“And not like Rumpelstiltskin's,” Emma says.

Regina looks over Emma's shoulder, but no one is watching them, no one has even driven by. “You're worried about what he'll do outside of Storybrooke. That's why you feel the need to do this test?” 

“Yes.” 

“He's no threat to us now. He would have no reason to expose himself in a non-magical world.” 

“And if he comes back here?” Emma asks. 

“He has no need of us now. Casting the curse got him to this world. Breaking it, and then breaking the boundary allowed him to leave Storybrooke to find his son. My part in this is done, as is yours.” 

Regina's angry, now, but not at Emma. Emma wants to tell her, _it sucks, doesn't it, to be a pawn in someone else's master plan._ But she just pulls her hands out of her pockets and says, “There are other people in town who can do magic. Any of them could make a mess, inside the boundary or out of it.”

“Then use one of them to perform your test, Emma.” Regina's anger slides away as quick as it came and she just looks tired again. Emma wonders if she's been sleeping at all.

“I don't trust them,” she says.

Regina glares at her, unconvinced. “You don't trust me.”

“Sure I do,” Emma says immediately.

Regina doesn't answer right away, as if having someone on her side is such a foreign notion that she has no idea how to respond. It makes Emma's chest feel tight—it reminds her too much of herself. 

“I won't use magic,” Regina says finally. 

“So we'll use mine,” Emma says. “We'll use the good kind, like before. Just help me kickstart it. Please.” 

Regina is still for a long moment, before she steps inside and leaves the door open for Emma to follow. “I'll need a few minutes, before we leave. And I will be driving. I have no intention of being seen riding in either your patrol car or your ridiculous excuse for a personal vehicle.” 

* 

On the road out of town, the line is marked with spray paint, but in a far corner of the forest where no one's likely to see them, there are stakes in the ground and ropes between trees that no one has bothered to remove yet. Emma takes two steps past the broken barrier and looks back at Regina. 

She expected hesitation, but not the way Regina freezes completely, as if just being close to the edge of her creation is too much. For the first time it occurs to Emma to ask what was here before, if Main Street was once undeveloped and wild like the forest, or if all matter is not truly consistent in the universe and the curse had changed even the shape of Maine, created land where there was none. She remembers the land that Regina had ravaged, and it doesn't seem out of the question. “Hey,” she says. “It's okay.”

“Leaving town meant... meant death, for anyone under the curse,” Regina says quietly, not looking at Emma but at the expanse of trees behind her. “ But nobody left Storybrooke... nobody _tried_ to leave, until you came, and time started moving. The idea simply never occurred to them. Each day was just the same as the last, just as empty and hazy and meaningless. To be trapped in a place isn't as grave a punishment as being trapped by a mind that cannot understand what's happening, cannot realize that a body doesn't age or that a memory can't be held onto. So no one left. No one made plans to leave.” 

Emma steps back over the line and asks, “Didn't Ruby? She wanted to move to Boston, but stayed because Granny had a heart attack. I thought that was the something bad Henry always talked about, you know, something bad happens when people try to leave?”

Regina shakes her head. “That was a false memory, one she woke up with every day for 28 years. A reason never to make real plans to leave. It was a good curse, Emma. It worked very well, until you showed up, even on me. I had nowhere and no reason to go, but if I even thought about it, if I even imagined leaving for just a moment, I experienced such blinding pain in my head that I thought I might explode and take the whole place with me.”

“But that's over now, Regina.” 

“Yes, it's over. You destroyed everything I built.” 

“I broke your curse because it turns out I never had a choice in the matter. And now everyone gets to move on with their lives. So do you.” Emma surprises them both then by holding out her hand. “Come with me. It's safe now.” 

Regina makes no move to take Emma's offered hand in her own, and so Emma grabs for it. “This is a pointless exercise,” Regina says. “I told you, Rumpelstiltskin will not expose his magic.” 

She doesn't try to pull away from Emma's grasp, and Emma doesn't try to pull her over the line. But Regina's spent a lifetime proving that she's not afraid, and after a few seconds she takes a step forward, and another, until she and Emma are several feet past the markers in the ground that no longer serve any purpose. Regina raises her other hand, and Emma expects fire, or a gust of wind, or a cracked tree branch. Instead, one small purple flower emerges from under a layer of fallen leaves, blooming in seconds as Regina closes her eyes. 

Where their skin touches, Emma feels a current pass from her own body into Regina's and back again, like every inch of them hums with magic. Nothing about it feels dark or dangerous, and when Regina lowers her hand and blinks slowly, the rush of magic between them doesn't stop right away. Emma can tell when someone is lying, and this tiny flower, she knows, is not a lie. Regina was meant to build, not break. She knows this suddenly and completely, just as well as she knows that Regina loves Henry enough to die for him. She holds onto Regina's hand and doesn't try to understand why she can't yet bear the thought of letting go. 

“There,” Regina says. “You have your answer.”


	7. Chapter 7

Henry wakes Emma early in the morning on her birthday, just as he had on his own. “When are you going to hit that stage where all you want to do is sleep in?” she asks, blinking at the clock and then at her son. 

“It's your birthday,” he says, grinning at her, and she rubs her eyes and sits up and reaches over to tousle his hair. 

“It's also very early on Sunday morning,” she mumbles, but he knows her well enough now not to be deterred, and he just keeps smiling at her, perfectly content. 

“Happy birthday,” he says. “I wanted to be the first to say it.” 

He wraps his arms around her and it's embarrassing, almost, how quickly she starts to feel like she might cry. It's nice to hear it first from Henry. A year ago she had no one, until he showed up at her door—and she doesn't know, may never know how to fit into a family whose empty space is in the shape of an infant, but there are days when she remembers that she'd rather have this than nothing. She'd rather have the baby she gave up, half grown and shared with the most difficult woman she's ever met. She'd rather have Snow and David, who are too late, but who try so very hard not to be too little. 

Emma may not be well-versed in love, but she doesn't think getting to know her family at age 28 would have hurt so much if she didn't love them. 

“I made you a card,” Henry says, holding it out to her. 

She's becoming a mother just in time, she thinks. By twelve he'll probably graduate to store-bought cards for his mothers' birthdays instead, but today she gets this one, a folded piece of paper with a carefully drawn picture of her on the front, sword in one hand and a cupcake in the other. “Happy birthday!” it says inside. “Love, Henry.” 

“There was supposed to be more inside, but I didn't know how to say it without sounding cheesy,” Henry says, sitting down next to her. 

Emma thinks of how lucky Regina has been, to have received dozens of cards like this one, for as long as Henry's been old enough to write. She means to set it down on her nightstand, but finds she doesn't want to stop looking at it just yet. “You didn't know how to say what?” she asks. 

“Just that... I'm really glad I found you,” he says. 

“Henry...” she says, and pulls him to her, hugs him tightly so he won't see her chin start to wobble. “Thank you for the card.” 

“You like it?” he asks, voice muffled against her neck. 

“Best one I've ever gotten,” she says. He doesn't need to know it's one of a very small number. It would be her favorite, regardless. 

“I was going to make you breakfast,” Henry says, “but Grandma said to call her when you get up and she'll come over and cook for you. Which is probably better. She's better at it than I am.” 

“Better than me, too,” Emma says. 

Henry grins. “I know.”

“Sorry about that,” Emma says, wincing, and thinks it's probably a small miracle that she hasn't burned down the kitchen yet. 

“It's okay,” he tells her. “You'll learn.” 

How is it possible, she wonders, that this boy's faith never wavers? 

Her parents show up half an hour later, carrying a waffle iron and a bag of ingredients and two gifts wrapped in silver and white paper. Snow sets everything down and reaches for Emma, kisses her cheek and hugs her and then cups her face with both hands, looks at her so lovingly that Emma has to close her eyes for just a second. “Happy birthday, Emma,” she says. 

David smiles widely at Emma and embraces her as soon as her mother lets her go, lifting her off the ground as if she's a little girl, his little girl. “Happy birthday,” he tells her as a surprised laugh escapes her throat. 

“Open your presents!” Henry exclaims, holding them out to her. 

“The little one's from me,” David says as Emma gently unwraps it. She hadn't been expecting anything, but of course they would bring her gifts. Emma doesn't know if she will ever grow accustomed to the normal things that go along with having people who love her. 

“It was my mother's,” he tells her as she opens the box to reveal a bracelet; a delicate, silver thing. “My family didn't have much, but my father worked very hard to be able to afford nice things for my mother, once in a while. Her ring, I gave to Snow, but this bracelet, I always planned to give to you. I assumed it was lost, but after the curse broke I found it tucked away in a drawer, just waiting for me to find it.” 

“It's beautiful,” Emma says softly, and looks up at him. “Thank you.” 

“Open Grandma's now!” Henry commands happily, and takes the bracelet from her in exchange for the second gift. 

Under the wrapping paper is an old leather-bound journal. “I kept a diary while I was pregnant with you,” Snow says. “It sat on my bookshelf right in this apartment for all those years and I never... I think something about the curse made my eyes pass right over it as if it wasn't there. I thought you might like to have it. So you would know how excited I was to meet you.”

Emma doesn't say anything as she gingerly opens the book, where her mother's neat handwriting fills the first page. 

_Dear Emma,_  

_I've only just learned that I'm with child, and though my former stepmother's threat weighs heavily on my mind, my excitement seems to have pushed away much of the dread. I know it's foolish to trust a superstition, but I believe in my heart that you are a girl, and I cannot wait to bring you into the world. I have to believe that whatever happens, I will be able to protect you, and protect our home._  

_There are months of waiting ahead, and still I find myself wondering already what you will look like and who you will be. It's hard to imagine you as anything but the bravest, smartest, most beautiful princess the kingdom has ever known._  

_Truthfully it wasn't until recently that I ever saw myself becoming a mother, but I think I have spent my whole life waiting for you, Emma. Your father and I love you so much already, and when we're finally able to hold you in our arms, I know we will feel complete. You are what we will fight for, now. You have already given us new meaning, and new strength._  

“This is... this is...” Emma says, looking up at Snow, unable to find any words that seem even vaguely appropriate. 

Snow's eyes are watery as she says, “Don't read the whole thing right now. It's time for breakfast, isn't it?”

Emma nods and closes the diary, and then pulls Snow into another hug. “Thank you,” she whispers so quietly that she's not sure if it's audible, but then she feels her mother nod. 

“You're welcome, sweetheart.” 

* 

After breakfast, Henry pulls David over to the TV to show him the new video game that Regina would undoubtedly and ironically consider to be too violent. Emma's quiet conversation with her mother at the table goes unnoticed against the sounds of explosions and Henry's repeated pleas of “ _come on_ ” at the television screen. 

Snow's hand, as ever, rests protectively on her stomach, and Emma asks, “Are you sure you're not going to find out if it's a boy or a girl?” 

Snow nods. “I'm sure. I'd like to be surprised. Your father's convinced it's a boy, of course, but you know how men can be. They always say they want a son, but as soon as their daughters are born they can't imagine wanting anyone more.” 

“Do you want a girl?” 

“Oh, I already have a girl,” she says casually, as if she didn't miss Emma's whole life, as if she didn't miss _having_ a daughter. Snow reaches over absently to pat Emma's hand as if she's being silly. There's something in her voice that says _you are mine, still, you are mine no matter what_ , even though she knows, they both know, there is a world of difference between a daughter like Emma and a daughter Snow would raise. 

Emma ducks her head and says, “At least the boundary's down. So you can take the baby on trips and stuff.” 

“Yes,” Snow says, as her hand moves slowly over her stomach. “Emma?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Please don't move away from Storybrooke.” 

Emma blinks at her mother, startled. “I wasn't planning on it.” 

“I mean ever,” Snow says, reaching over to hold Emma's hand. “I know that I can't ask you... that I have no right to ask you for that. I know that it's selfish. I know that I shouldn't ever make you feel like you have to do something because it's what I want.” She falls silent and glances over at David and Henry, who haven't looked away from their game. 

“But?” Emma prompts. 

“But I want you to be with me. I want you to be happy and to do whatever you want to do, but I want you to be here.” 

So few people in Emma's life have actually _wanted_ her that she can't do anything but nod and squeeze her mother's hand. “Okay,” she says. “It's okay. I'm not going anywhere.” 

* 

The party at Granny's is full of people who look at Emma and see a savior, who still think of Snow as royalty and treat Emma with a reverence that she will never feel like she deserves. Henry leads her around proudly—his mom, his white knight—and his is the only opinion that matters. 

When her mother catches her eye and looks somehow both happy and grief-stricken, Emma knows she's imagining the grand celebrations she would have held at the palace for her daughter's birthdays each year. Emma, unwillingly, remembers 28 years of birthdays scarcely recognized—and the most disappointing of those, years five through twelve, spent pining for parties and cake with giant icing flowers and a family to grant all her wishes. 

It's a school night for Henry, and Emma's grateful for the excuse to leave her own party early. He protests until she whispers in his ear, “If you're good I'll let you have cake for breakfast. Just don't tell your mom. Or my mom.” 

The offer satisfies him enough that he goes straight to bed when they get home, and Emma stands in the living room holding her mother's diary, full of letters that begin “Dear Emma.” There's a knock at the door before Emma can start reading again, and while Regina isn't quite the last person she expected to see, the tray of cupcakes she's carrying is perhaps the biggest surprise of the day.

“If someone's told you that look of open-mouthed shock is attractive, I'm afraid they've led you astray,” Regina says.

“What's that?” Emma asks. 

Regina maneuvers past Emma into the apartment. “I know you know what a cupcake is, Emma.” 

Emma frowns and follows her into the kitchen. “I mean, did you bring them to make fun of me?” 

Regina sets them down and sighs. “I know you probably haven't had a lot of good birthdays, but when someone bakes cupcakes for you it's generally meant as a sign of good will.” 

“I just meant... because last year I told you I bought myself that cupcake, and...” 

“You made a wish and it came true. You weren't alone on your birthday. That's more than I can say for any wish I've ever made.” 

Emma stares at the cupcakes instead of Regina's face. Once in a while—and much more often, lately—she'll remember that Regina's life wasn't any easier than her own. But neither was her mother's, neither was Ruby's, Ashley's, anyone's. Emma shrugs and looks up. “I just didn't think you liked me enough to bake anything non-poisonous for me.” She pauses. “They're not poisoned, right?” 

“Honestly,” Regina says impatiently, as if Emma's concerns are completely irrational. But maybe, Emma thinks as she eyes the carefully iced cupcakes, they are. She's the one who keeps saying Regina has changed, after all. 

“Mom?” Henry says from the top of the stairs. After a few seconds he's padding into the kitchen, rubbing at his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to wish Emma a happy birthday,” she tells him, and he tilts his head and regards her with surprise. 

“Oh,” he says. He's accepted that she loves him, that much has been obvious over the past few months, but it appears to be somewhat of a shock to him that she'd offer any degree of kindness to anyone else. 

“You should get back to bed, Henry. It's a school night,” Regina says. 

“But-” he starts, with a longing gaze at the cupcakes. 

“Remember our deal,” Emma says, and he becomes immediately agreeable. 

“Oh yeah,” he says, and God, she loves him, but his wink is anything but subtle. “Goodnight, Mom,” he says to Regina. “I'll see you tomorrow?” 

She nods. “Yes. Goodnight, dear,” she says, and reaches to cup his face with her hand. The look in her eyes when he lets her will never stop feeling like a punch to Emma's gut. 

“Your deal?” Regina asks once Henry's back in his room. 

“Oh,” Emma says. “I told him if he didn't give me any crap about going to bed on time tonight I'd let him have cake for... dessert after a balanced dinner tomorrow.” 

“Because bribing a child is always the right course of action,” Regina says, glaring at her. 

Emma smiles and picks up a cupcake. “Hey, this year can I wish that you and I stop fighting about parenting styles?” 

“You can try.”

But the cupcakes don't have candles, and Emma knows she'd wish for something far more complicated than that. She peels away the paper and takes a bite. “Oh my God, if they're poison I don't even care.” 

“I'm glad you're pleased.” Regina sounds a great deal more disinterested than she probably is. Emma realizes, as she takes another bite and turns to walk into the living room, that she's sort of Regina's only friend. If that's what either of them would call this, anyway. She sits on the couch and finishes her cupcake, managing not to drop too many crumbs, and Regina follows her eventually, hesitating for just a moment before sitting down next to Emma. 

“Hey,” Emma says, eyeing her mother's journal on the coffee table. 

“Yes?” 

“Do you think you'd ever... I mean if Henry was gonna be there too, or if he was away at college or something... would you ever want to live somewhere else?” Emma tugs at the sleeves of her shirt and frowns again as she looks at Regina. 

“Where would I go?” Regina asks, genuinely surprised by the question. 

Emma shrugs. “It doesn't matter. Anywhere. You could go anywhere.” 

Regina studies her face, and it's not as unnerving as it might have been even a few weeks ago. “What's on your mind, Emma?” 

Emma taps her fingers against her knee. “This morning, my mom asked me never to move away.” 

Regina, perhaps in an attempt not to say something that would only make Emma angry, just lifts one eyebrow. 

“It wasn't like what you're probably thinking,” Emma says. “It was just... sort of sad.” 

“Or controlling.” 

“I don't really blame her for saying it.” Emma shakes her head. “It's just that...” 

“You don't like feeling tied down,” Regina finishes. 

“I don't want to be mad at her for saying it,” Emma says, leaning back against the couch cushions and turning her head toward Regina. “She wants to be with me, and all I ever wanted was... to be wanted, you know? And it's not like I even want to go anywhere. Right now, at least. But if I did, someday...” 

“If you did,” Regina says carefully, quietly. “It would be your decision. Not hers. You could leave tomorrow and it would be your decision.” 

It's a luxury Regina had rarely been afforded in her own life. “When did you become the person I talk to about my problems?” Emma asks. 

Regina rolls her eyes. “I assume it was right around the time you became the only person in Storybrooke over the age of eleven with whom I can stand to be in the same room for more than five minutes.” 

“What about Kathryn?” 

“Kathryn... has no desire to continue a friendship with the woman who orchestrated her kidnapping,” Regina says, and for a moment looks so filled with regret that Emma wishes she had any idea how to make her feel better. 

“Have you talked to her?” 

“No, I haven't. Not since the curse broke.” 

“Well, don't be so sure, then. You tried to kill me, too, and look at us now.” Emma nudges Regina with her elbow and smiles, but when Regina looks at her, Emma can see tears gathering in her eyes. “Hey, it's okay,” Emma says, and without thinking reaches over to hold Regina's hand. Regina blinks and looks at her and doesn't resist it. 

“To answer your question, no,” Regina says finally. “I don't imagine there's any place in the world for me now but this town. Even if everyone who lives here aside from my son and his birth mother would rather see me dead.” 

“Well, if you ever wanted to go,” Emma says, and squeezes Regina's hand. 

“What? You'd come with me?” 

“Yeah. I mean, so we could both be with Henry. You know, if you... wanted to leave before he grows up, or whatever.” Emma means it, she thinks, until she remembers her mother's plea again, and pictures how Snow might cry, baby in her arms, and beg Emma not to go. 

“You don't need to lie,” Regina tells her. “It's not part of the savior's duties to make me feel better.” 

Emma just keeps holding her hand.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELCOME BACK, sorry the wait was so long. I would like to promise I won't take this long between chapters again, but I have some time-consuming stuff coming up in my life so I'll just promise to try.

_Dear Emma,_  

_My mother died many years ago, when I was a little girl. It was the first time I realized that being a good person didn't mean bad things wouldn't happen. Red never knew her own mother, nor did sweet Ella, and I could never decide which was worse- to know your mother for a short time and have her taken away, or to never have known a mother's love at all. It's such a short time until you come into the world, and I find myself wishing more and more that my mother were here to tell me what to do. But I think we'll be all right, little one. I think you and I will learn together._  

_It seems that you and I are going on an adventure, Emma. Just the two of us, far away from home. I'm devastated that your father can't come with us, but he tells me he knows how strong I am, he knows we can withstand this separation. I'm so sorry you won't grow up with your father. He's such a good man, kind and brave and so loving. My heart aches whenever I remember that you won't know him until you're grown. You and I must love each other dearly, keep each other close. We'll be all each other has, at least at first. I will do everything I can to make sure you feel loved, every day._  

Emma wants to throw the book across the room. Wants to call her mother and shout, wants to know why she would give her this diary when nothing happened as she said it would. When she _hadn't_ been there to care for Emma. 

But Snow calls Emma instead, tells her good morning and asks if she's put anything in her body other than coffee today, and wants to know if Emma would like to go to Granny's for Thanksgiving or just have a quiet holiday at home with the four of them. “We'll do whichever you want.” 

Last year, Mary Margaret had gone to the potluck at Granny's and Emma had gone to work, claiming she couldn't get out of it. Mary Margaret knew she was lying, but didn't press her, and brought Emma a plate of leftovers at the sheriff's station late in the evening. 

“So. What are you thankful for?” she'd asked, sitting down across from Emma at her desk. 

“Potato salad,” Emma had answered, digging in gratefully. She may hot have wanted any part of a huge holiday gathering, but that hadn't meant she wasn't hungry. 

“ _Emma_ ,” Mary Margaret had said, already so fond of her. 

Emma had shrugged. “Maybe a couple other things,” she'd amended, unable to say _Henry,_ unable to say _you._  

“Just us, I guess,” Emma says now. “But then you're kind of stuck doing all the cooking. You know I can really only make tacos, and that's not very Thanksgivingy.” 

Snow laughs. “Oh, I don't mind. I've never done an entire Thanksgiving dinner before, it might be fun. Though maybe by next year we'll teach you how to make a few more things.” 

“Are you sure you're up for it?” 

“Just because I'm pregnant, it doesn't mean I've suddenly become a delicate flower,” Snow says, and sighs. “Honestly, you and your father.” 

She means to sound annoyed, Emma knows, but Snow is so content these days that she can't quite manage it. Emma's eyes land on her mother's diary again and she doesn't feel so angry about it anymore, at least for now. She has more to be thankful for this year than any year before, even if she doesn't know how to react to most of it. 

“What do you think Regina's doing for the holidays?” Emma asks without thinking, and can practically hear the smile slide off of her mother's face over the phone. 

“She should be giving thanks that she hasn't been imprisoned,” Snow says, and Emma flinches.

“She's doing better, you know,” Emma says. “Henry's really starting to trust her again. She made me cupcakes for my birthday and not a single one of them was poisoned.” 

“That's good, for Henry. I want that for him. I don't want him to lose anyone that he loves. But I worry about you getting too comfortable with her, Emma. I know I don't have to tell you that trusting Regina has never once worked out for me in the past.” 

“I can handle Regina. And I can take care of myself,” Emma says, frowning. 

The pause before Snow answers is just long enough for Emma to know she's hurt her mother's feelings. “I know you can. But mothers worry. Even when their children are grown.” 

“Well if you start to worry,” Emma tells her, “just remember I've killed a dragon, and climbed a beanstalk, and I've got some freaky magic thing that keeps my heart stuck inside my chest, so.” 

“I know,” Snow says, very softly. “I'm so proud of you, Emma.” 

Emma feels her cheeks flush and she mumbles, “Thanks. Um. I'll bring something over for Thanksgiving, okay? I promise I won't cook it.” 

“All right,” Snow says, laughing again. “We'll all be very thankful for that.” 

* 

Emma has lunch at Granny's, eating her grilled cheese and french fries at the counter where Ruby makes a half-hearted attempt not to look like she's spying on Regina, who's sitting at a booth in the corner with Kathryn. Emma's glad Regina's getting out of her house, and glad that it doesn't look like Kathryn wants to kill her, and then wonders when she started worrying about Regina in any capacity that doesn't directly relate to Henry. 

“What do you think that's all about?” Ruby asks, nodding over at them, wiping down the spot of counter next to Emma for the second time in five minutes. 

Emma shrugs. “Don't you have, like, super wolf hearing or something?” 

Ruby puts her hand on her hip and glares, and Emma holds out her fries as a peace offering. Ruby takes one. “My hearing's probably a little better than yours, but mostly it's just my sense of smell that's super. And it's crowded in here right now, which makes eaves dropping difficult. But it doesn't look like they're fighting, does it?” 

Emma turns around to glance at Regina and Kathryn, and no, it doesn't look like they're fighting. But Regina looks unsure of herself in a way that Emma's not quite comfortable with, and she turns back around quickly. “I think they're just having lunch,” she says. 

“Did you know they were talking again?”

Emma shakes her head. “No, the last I knew they hadn't spoken since before the curse broke.” 

“You don't think Regina's trying to do anything shifty, do you?” Ruby asks, and Emma has to remember that some people have no reason to trust her, some people haven't felt her magic grow flowers or eaten un-poisoned cupcakes with her late at night. 

“No,” Emma says. “I think she just... I mean Kathryn was her only friend, basically. I think she missed her.” 

Ruby's loyalty will always be to Snow, but she has known loneliness. “I'm not sure I'd give her another chance,” she says, but it sounds kinder than if Snow were the one saying it. “I guess everyone needs a friend, right? Even Regina.” 

“Even Regina,” Emma repeats, drumming her fingers on the counter. 

“Your mom... she knows the worst parts of me, and loves me anyway. Anyone who can find that kind of friend is extremely lucky.” 

_Luckier than me,_ Emma doesn't say, but maybe she's wrong. 

Ruby gives up trying to spy and disappears into the kitchen, and Emma finishes her lunch alone, trying her best not to look up when Kathryn leaves and Regina doesn't follow her. 

Against her better judgment (or maybe at this point it's not) Emma crosses the diner and slides into the seat across from Regina. “Hey,” she says. 

Regina doesn't exactly smile at her, but she doesn't look displeased to see her, either. “Hello, Emma.”

“So?” Emma says expectantly, and the way Regina sighs at her sounds inexplicably good-natured. 

“I suppose you've been spying on me the entire time, then?” 

“Not spying,” Emma counters. “Just casually observing, out in the open, in a public place.” 

“Yes, well, you're very subtle.” 

“So how'd it go? It looked okay.”

Regina takes a sip of her water. “It's not as if we cried and embraced each other, but yes, it was... okay.” 

“You gonna give me any details? Come on, Regina.” 

Regina scowls, and it's strange how these expressions make Emma want to smile, now, instead of fight. “Why are you so concerned with how my lunch went?” 

Emma shrugs. “I just am. Plus, it didn't sound like you were ever gonna talk to her until I told you maybe you should.” 

“Please don't fool yourself into believing you have any influence over my actions,” Regina says, looking so comically nonplussed that Emma does smile, this time. 

“But it was all right? It seemed civil, at least.” 

Regina takes a moment to answer. “Kathryn is a smart, kindhearted woman, who is stronger than I've ever given her credit for. I don't deserve her forgiveness and I don't have it, but she is happy now, and she doesn't wish me any harm.” 

“That's not a bad start,” Emma says. 

“I don't think it was a start so much as it was closure,” Regina says, and Emma notices the sudden rigidness of her posture, how she barely moves. 

Emma thinks the kindest thing to do might be to change the subject, and after a few seconds of silence, she asks, “Did you guys celebrate Thanksgiving, back in the Enchanted Forest?” 

Regina raises her eyebrows, relaxes just barely enough for Emma to see it. 

“I guess that's a stupid question, isn't it?” 

“I wasn't going to say it, but...” 

Emma laughs, because she knows the difference now, between being insulted by Regina and simply being spoken to in the only way Regina knows how. “Stop.” 

“I didn't celebrate it here, either, until I adopted Henry. Everyone else did, of course, but there didn't seem to be much point in it when I didn't have anyone to celebrate with. But then Henry was born, and... he gave me so much to be thankful for.” 

Emma nods. “He's pretty good for that.” 

“Yes,” Regina agrees. “He is a gift, our son.” 

Emma doesn't think Regina has ever referred to him as _theirs_ so casually, and she looks at Regina quietly as something starts to swell within her, some sense of family that has nothing to do with her parents. “I didn't really do Thanksgiving either, when I was on my own,” she says finally. “I kind of wiggled out of it last year, too, but I guess this year we're having family Thanksgiving at my parents' house.” 

“How lovely,” Regina says, syrupy and sarcastic. 

“Yeah, well. I'd invite you, if I didn't think it was the absolute last place you'd ever want to be.” Emma watches as Regina pulls a mirror and a tube of lipstick out of her purse, and reapplies color to her lips quickly and precisely. 

“I can guarantee you that nothing about spending a holiday in Snow's home will make me feel thankful,” Regina says.

“And,” Emma adds, remembering a near-catastrophe in Mary Margaret's kitchen almost a year ago, “She has one of those electric carving knives, so it doesn't really sound like the safest environment for either of you.” 

Regina looks vaguely interested by the idea but chooses not to answer, and after a moment, Emma stands. “Time for me to get back to work,” she says. 

“I'll walk out with you,” Regina tells her, gathering her things and rising from the table. 

Regina's car is parked close to the diner and Emma walks her to it. “I'll bring him by after we have Thanksgiving with my parents, okay? You won't miss any holidays with him. I promise.” 

Regina's keys are gripped tightly in one hand and Emma reaches for the other. “Thank you,” Regina says. 

That feeling in Emma's chest is swirling, still, and she glances up and down the street, as the realization dawns on her suddenly that she might lean in and kiss Regina then, if they weren't in public. It makes her drop Regina's hand, startled, and Regina blinks at her, frustratingly blank-faced. 

“I'll drop Henry off this evening,” Regina says. “After dinner.” 

“Yeah,” Emma says. “I'll see you then.” She turns and heads toward her own car, trying to ignore the prickling in her fingers, the feeling like magic, where they had touched.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VERY VERY SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG, but I am back and this story is back and I swear I will finish it.

Regina drops Henry off at the apartment in the evening as scheduled, looking distinctly mournful as always to be sending him off to another home, no matter how well things have gone between them lately. Emma finds that she desperately wants Regina's face to stop looking like that, but she's distracted by the oversized bundle of new comic books in her son's arms. 

“Hey Emma,” he says. “I'm gonna go up to my room and read these, okay?” He doesn't even wait for her to say hello before he's thumping up the stairs, but it's almost nice, that he feels safe enough to start taking her for granted. 

Emma arches an eyebrow at Regina. “So, what, did you just buy him every comic Marvel puts out?” Regina's impulse is to spoil him, still, and Emma's not sure if it's habit or if she truly doesn't believe he would love her regardless. 

“Emma, please,” Regina says dismissively, but after a moment she adds, “There are a few from DC.” 

“ _Regina._ ” 

“You can hardly expect me to cut him off in the middle of a story arc,” Regina says, shrugging. “It would be cruel.” 

“I'm gonna lose my status as the fun mom if I'm not careful, huh?” Emma says, and immediately wishes she could take it back. _Fun mom_ probably sounds a lot like _favorite mom_ to Regina. “I mean, not that-” 

“He's done all his homework,” Regina says, cutting her off. “So the comic books will probably keep him occupied until bedtime.” 

“I know,” Emma says gently. She knows him now, knows his habits and his routines, knows that she'll have to tell him three times tonight that it's time to brush his teeth and go to bed, that she'll check twice to make sure he's not under the covers with a flashlight, still reading. 

“Yes, I suppose you do,” Regina says, sounding almost surprised. 

“Look, just. Pretend I didn't say anything about being the fun mom, okay? It's not like that. You know he would love you if you never bought him another comic book again, right? I know it's hard for you to leave him with me, but you're not losing him.” 

“It is hard for me to leave him here, yes,” Regina says. “I imagine it will always be. But whenever I'm able to stop thinking about how empty the house feels without him, I realize... it's not, as it turns out, the worst feeling in the world to know that there is another person who loves Henry as much as I do. To know that... you and I are parenting him together.” 

“To know you're not alone,” Emma says. 

“It's an unfamiliar feeling.” 

Emma nods. “For both of us,” she says, for a moment just watching Regina in the doorway, her dark eyes and perfectly behaving hair, still dressing each day in the mayor's wardrobe though the job hasn't been hers for months now. 

“I should go,” Regina says. “I'll have him for the weekend?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I'll drop him off on Friday.” 

Regina's expression is unexpectedly soft. “Perhaps we'll talk about scaling back on the comic books.” 

Emma takes a leap, then, leans in to kiss Regina before she can think too much about what her reaction will be. Regina freezes for only a moment before she's kissing Emma back, their arms sliding around each other, and God, on the list of things Emma thought would never, ever happen... 

When they part, it's Emma who freezes, until Regina smiles at her, reaches out to place a hand on Emma's arm and says, “I'll talk to you soon,” like everything's all right, like neither of them have made a mistake. 

“Okay,” Emma says, and watches Regina go. 

* 

On Thanksgiving, Emma picks up the pie (pumpkin, not apple) that she'd begged Granny to make for her, and sends a text message to Regina: _Going over to my parents' house now, see you in a few hours hopefully._  

Her phone beeps as she's buckling her seatbelt and handing the pie to Henry. _Should I wish you luck?_  

She smirks and rolls her eyes at the phone and Henry asks, “Who is it? Is it Grandma?” 

_I might need it_ , she replies, and shoves her phone in her pocket before starting the car. “It's your mom, actually.” 

“Oh,” Henry says, tapping his thumb on the box in his lap. “You guys are really friends now, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Emma says, glancing over at him as she drives. “Yeah, I guess we are. Is that okay?” 

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Before, I thought... I never thought I would have two moms, I thought that when the curse broke, she would... you know. But she was still my mom. And then I thought you guys would still fight all the time, but you didn't. It's better this way. I thought maybe I'd be the only one who didn't hate her, but I'm glad I'm not.” 

“Me too,” Emma says, and loves her son so much that she doesn't know how to cope with it. 

At a red light, she pulls her phone out of her pocket. _I'll be here when it's over_ , Regina says. 

When they reach her parents' house, David greets her with a hug and a kiss on her cheek and says, “Snow hasn't let me in the kitchen all day, she thinks I'll set something on fire. I'm starving.” 

“We could have pie first,” Henry suggests helpfully, holding it out. 

“We'll have pie when it's time for pie!” Snow calls out from the kitchen. “This is Thanksgiving, we're doing things in the right order!” 

“Easy for her to say,” David grumbles. “She's been snacking the whole time.” 

“Eating for two, Charming,” Snow says as she emerges from the kitchen. “You're just in time, everything's ready.” 

Snow and David bring the food out, and all Emma wants to do is sit down and eat until her stomach can't fit another bite, but Snow insists that they each say what they're thankful for before anyone picks up a fork. Emma's thankful it's only the four of them if they have to go through all that before eating, and as she looks over at her father she can tell he's thinking the same thing. 

“I'll go first,” Snow says, and immediately her eyes fill with tears. “I'm so thankful to have my family back. My little girl, who is so strong and beautiful, who I cherish... who I am so proud of every day. My husband, my heart, who has always come back to me no matter what separates us. My clever grandson, who has been as brave as any hero in the kingdom. And this baby,” she says, hands on her round belly. “This beautiful gift. This new beginning.” Wobbly-voiced, she lets a tear spill out of her eye and down her cheek. 

Henry looks about as lost as he always does when an adult starts crying, and Emma thinks David looks dangerously near tears himself, and this Thanksgiving's about to be more than she's equipped to deal with already. 

But David swipes a hand under his eye and says, “I'm thankful we're about to eat.” 

Snow laughs and wipes roughly at her own tears. “David, that doesn't count.” 

He smiles at her, the love on his face so complete that Emma almost has to look away. “I'm thankful for all the love in my life. For all the days ahead of us and all we have yet to share.” 

Snow looks like she might start crying again and Emma reaches for her hand, because she's used to it now, because she loves her mother even if she can't put it into words. 

“I'm thankful that I have my family,” Henry chimes in quickly. “My whole family,” he says, eyes on Emma. 

Emma looks at him, her little boy, and wonders how she can possibly come from a family who all seem to find it so easy to say how they feel. “My turn, huh? I'm thankful that... even if I had to get through some pretty bad times... I guess what matters is that now I know I'm not alone. So even if we can't change what happened... I have people who care about me now. That means something.” 

Snow squeezes her hand. “Yes. It means a great deal.” 

“Can we eat now?” Henry asks, grinning, excited by the prospect that everyone might start eating and stop crying. 

Snow sighs. “Well, if that's all any of you care about,” she says, and Henry giggles, and David stands to carve the turkey. 

* 

“Do you think my mom made food too?” Henry asks on the way to Regina's house after dinner. He sounds hopeful, and Emma glances at him before she flips on her turn signal. 

“How can you even think of eating more food right now?” Emma asks, but she remembers teenaged foster brothers who inhaled everything in sight, and thinks Henry's not too far off. 

Henry shrugs. “Grandma's a really good cook, but Mom's like, _really_ good.” He looks out the window. “I never got that excited about Thanksgiving because you only get a few days off school and there's no presents, but... Mom's really good at Thanksgiving dinner.” 

Regina knew that they were eating with Emma's parents, and Emma doesn't know if Regina has any idea that what she does for her son on this day means anything to him. She turns onto Mifflin Street and thinks that Regina should know. She should never have to wonder. 

“I don't know if she was planning on making anything, but I'm sure if... if she knows it's important to you, she'll make you whatever you want.” 

Henry nods and tugs at his seatbelt as they drive down his street. “Okay,” he says, and she can tell he believes it. 

As it turns out, Regina hasn't made anything so extravagant as the meal they'd eaten two hours ago, but she has prepared a couple of Henry's favorites—some kind of elaborate, fancy looking mac and cheese, and a pumpkin pie that looks even better than Granny's. 

“I know you've eaten dinner already,” she tells him, her hand smoothing over his hair as he hugs her hello, “but I made them for you in case you got hungry for a snack. Or you can have them tomorrow.” 

“Thanks, Mom,” he says, smiling and meaning it, and something in Regina's eyes seems to settle. Emma wishes that Regina would stop wondering if her acts of kindness toward her son will be rejected. 

_They won't be_ , she wants to say. _It's not going to be like that anymore._  

“So I see you made it through in one piece,” Regina says, as if attending a family holiday was more like riding into battle, and Henry looks up at Emma, confused. 

“Were you nervous? About Thanksgiving?” 

Emma doesn't know why, but when she meets Regina's eyes she feels like it's all right, like however she feels is just fine. “Not nervous,” Emma tells him. “I mean, not really. It's just that it was... my first real family Thanksgiving, and I guess...” she trails off and shrugs, but Henry seems to understand. 

“So it's like that family stuff we talked about over the summer? How it's still new?” 

“Yeah,” Emma says gratefully. “But yes, I made it in one piece,” she says, looking at Regina again. “It wasn't bad.” 

It's not bad here, either, she thinks, in this house with her son and his mother, who kissed her in the doorway of her mom's old apartment, in an uncursed little town that was never supposed to feel this much like _home._  

Regina's hand rests on Henry's shoulder, but it's not quite possessive, not like it used to be, and Emma thinks they look so much alike sometimes, even if it's not genes that made them that way. 

“Good,” Regina tells her, and looks like she wants to say more, but there's a difference between their son knowing them as friends and knowing about whatever's happening between them now. He glances back and forth from mother to mother, as if he's picked up on something already. 

“I think I'm ready to eat more,” he says. 

“I'll make you a plate,” Regina tells him, and they follow her into the kitchen. 

* 

Henry starts to doze off on the couch between them that night, in front of the Batman movie that usually puts Emma to sleep. Emma thinks about going home, once they've gotten him upstairs and convinced him to change into his pajamas before flopping face first onto his bed, but instead she just follows Regina back downstairs and into the kitchen again where she threads her fingers through Regina's hair and kisses her up against the refrigerator. 

“Emma,” Regina says, and it sounds like an unconvincing _no_ , even as her fingers rest lightly on Emma's hip, even as she doesn't push her away. “Emma, this isn't what you want.” 

“Pretty sure it is,” Emma says, as her hand trails down Regina's arm. 

“It's not what you deserve, then.” 

“I don't even know what that means.” 

Regina turns her head away and closes her eyes and Emma wants to tell her _stop, look at me._ “You're good, Emma. You're... made of light. I can be a good mother to Henry but I can't be a good person. That goodness... that's not in me anymore. I'm not sure it ever was.”

Emma doesn't hesitate, just puts her hand right over Regina's heart and feels it beating, steady and real. “I don't care how black you think your heart is, I know better. I know you. Henry knows you. And this is what I want.” 

Regina looks at her, finally, and Emma knows that nobody has cared for Regina in this way since Daniel. She leans her forehead against Regina's and says, again, “This is what I want. So if you want it too... you just have to tell me. Just tell me, all right?” 

Regina is still for a moment, but then her arms wrap around Emma and hold on as if Emma's the first lifeline she's been thrown in such a very long time. “Yes,” she says, barely louder than a whisper. “Yes.” 

* 

_Dear Emma,_  

_They say there is only one true love for us in this life. Before I met your father, this is a notion that gave me very little comfort. I didn't know if I would ever have that kind of love in my life. As a princess it was more likely I'd be married off to an appropriate prince in an arrangement made by our parents, and the most I would hope for is that he and I would grow to love each other in time. My one true love and I might never have the chance to meet. After I left home, on the run from my stepmother, it didn't seem as if I could hope to have much love in my life at all, romantic or otherwise. I was alone._

_There is a saying, an old story my mother told me, that when two people are meant to meet each other they are connected by an invisible red thread that can never break, no matter how far it is stretched or how it may tangle. I asked her if the thread was only for husbands and wives, and she said she believed any two people could have such a thread between them. She believed there was one between her heart and mine, that before I was born it had tied us together and made sure I would be her daughter._

_Years later I stopped believing in that kind of destiny. My mother had died, and surely that meant our thread was as good as broken. But then I met Red, my dearest friend, and she became family to me. It seemed as if we were meant to know and help and protect each other. I met your father not long after that, and the moment I knew I loved him was the moment I started believing in true love again, in a thread between us that brought us together._  

_I know that no matter what happens, your father and I will always love each other deeply and completely. He is a part of me now, and I never feel safer or more whole than when I am in his arms. When I think about what your life will be, Emma, that is what I want for you. I want you to know this feeling. I want you to find the half that makes you whole._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it has been a while. There are several reasons for this: I got tired, I got lazy, my opinion of Snow White soured, I stopped watching that shitstorm of a show and wanted nothing to do with it except for discussing AU scenarios with a friend. But I was always kicking myself for not finishing this story. And there were, if I’m honest, supposed to be maybe three more chapters instead of just this one, but I looked at what I had written already- the bulk of what became this last chapter- and realized that anything I would write to go in between these pieces were mostly unnecessary to what I had always intended as the central point of this story: that Emma has a place in her family. She has a place with her parents, whose new baby will not and cannot ever replace her (a wild departure, I hear, from the events of season three.) She has a place with her son and a place with Regina. And so I thought, rather than leave it unfinished forever, I could try to give it some closure. Hopefully it’s enough, and I truly appreciate anyone who still cares enough at this point to read it.

Emma wakes up in Regina's bed in the middle of the night, and doesn't know why she ever bothers to think that her life can't get any stranger, because she's proven wrong every time. Not that  _this_ is strange, really, being with Regina after finally beginning to understand the way she feels about her—but she is a princess, Snow White's daughter, and she's just slept with the evil queen, a witch. Those titles mean nothing, she knows that now, but still it sounds absurd, to think of in those terms.

She almost laughs, but manages not to, and inches her body closer to Regina's, slides her arm over Regina's waist. Regina stirs and opens her eyes and Emma is sure she'll be rejected, but the look on Regina's face is so unexpectedly gentle.

Emma leans in and presses her lips to Regina's forehead. “Go back to sleep,” she says.

Regina closes her eyes. “I would if you'd stop moving around.”

Emma smiles and kisses Regina again. “Sorry,” she whispers, unconvincingly, and changes her mind. This doesn't feel strange at all.

*

In the morning, Emma rolls over and opens her eyes to an empty bedroom. She stretches out and gropes clumsily for her phone, expecting to have a voicemail from her mother wanting to know where she's been all night, until she remembers she doesn't live with her parents anymore. She has no missed calls and no text messages and so she puts her phone back and spreads her body out in order to take up as much space as possible on Regina's outrageously comfortable bed.

The bedroom door opens a few minutes later, and Emma lifts her head to see Regina, who has apparently already taken a shower and gotten dressed and probably done about five other things that Emma would find to be completely unnecessary at this hour of the morning. “Hey,” Emma says, and just wants her to come back to bed, or wants it to be last night again, or wants to skip the next 16 or so hours so she can be here, again.

But when Regina shuts the door behind her she doesn't come any closer. “You should get out of bed,” she says, and Emma sits up and pulls the covers around her, wondering if this is rejection, finally, if she's being kicked out after somehow being allowed to stay the night.

“I don't have to work until this afternoon,” Emma says, like she doesn't know what's happening, and Regina takes a few steps forward, finally.

“Emma,” she says, tired but not unkind, and Emma interrupts her before she can say anymore.

“I know. This was a mistake, and it can't happen again, and we should forget about it and just go back to... whatever that thing was between enemies and friends.” She's more upset than she thought she would be. “Just give me a few minutes to get dressed and I'll be out of here. I'll come pick up Henry on Sunday evening like we planned, okay?”

Regina stands still, halfway between the door and Emma. “That's not what I meant.”

Emma's hands, clutching the sheets stiffly, start to relax. “Oh.”

“Henry will be awake soon. It's fine if he knows you stayed the night here, but not that you stayed the night in my bedroom.”

“Oh,” Emma says again. “I guess it's a little early for that, huh?” But she doesn't know if that's what Regina means either, or if she intends for Henry never to know, for whatever they're doing together to remain a permanent secret.

Regina crosses the room, finally, stands next to Emma and reaches out to brush her wild morning hair out of her eyes. Regina's hand is warm and soft, and her touch is gentle. “Get dressed,” she says, and it sounds, in that moment, like this isn't a secret, like it's not something wrong they're doing that they have to hide. “I'll make breakfast.” She smiles, and Emma leans into her touch, and it's still not strange, or unexpected, or wrong in any sense of the word.

*

Henry wanders into the kitchen half an hour later, still in his pajamas. Emma's sitting at the kitchen counter, chin in her hands, watching Regina make French toast, and thinking she would like for this to become normal, waking up this way. That it's not just Henry she wants to see every morning, but his mother, too.

“Emma?” he says, rubbing at his eyes like maybe he's hallucinating.

“Morning, kid,” she says. She's showered and dressed and her hair's still wet, and her hands are wrapped around her first cup of coffee.

“Good morning, Henry,” Regina says, turning away from the stove briefly to smile at him.

“Hi, Mom. Did Emma spend the night?” he asks, and Emma grins at him, shrugging.

“You know The Dark Knight puts me to sleep,” she says. “I don't know why you like it so much. It's just a bunch of dudes sitting around talking about crime.”

Henry sighs, long and weary. “Emma, he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now.” He walks over to the stove to peek at what Regina's making. She leans over to kiss the top of his head, and he turns around to look at Emma again. “Did you stay in the guest room?”

Emma hesitates for a moment, but Regina, unperturbed, fills the silence. “You don't think I made her sleep on the couch, do you?”

“No...” he says. “I guess not.” He tilts his head as he scrutinizes Emma, and it's the same expression he wears when he wants to solve a mystery. He turns back to his mother, leans into her side just a little. “Is breakfast almost ready?”

“Yes,” she says, and Emma thinks Regina's as relaxed as she's ever seen her, right now. Emma loves her this way. “Just a few minutes. Why don't you pour yourself some juice?”

Henry pulls the orange juice out of the refrigerator and Emma sips her coffee, closing her eyes for a moment and letting herself feel like she's at home.

*

Emma asks Henry what he wants for Christmas, a few days after Thanksgiving, and he hands her a typed list which he'd apparently been carrying around until the right moment presented itself. Emma can't help but marvel at how her son's experience of the holiday has been so very different than either of his mothers'.

“I was going to make a list for you and a list for Mom,” he says, as Emma's eyes scan over the page. “But I figured you could handle it together.”

His tone makes her glance up from the list, to see his eyes boring into her like he's waiting for a confession. “Together, huh?” she says, not bothering to ask him what he means.

“Yeah,” he says, and they stare each other down for a moment.

“Look, Henry,” Emma finally says, and he interrupts her.

“I'm not mad about it. I just don't like secrets.”

Emma folds the list and puts it in her pocket. “We were going to tell you. It's just... new, and different. These things take time to figure out, sometimes.”

Henry looks down. “Just... don't hurt each other. Okay?”

“Henry...” Emma says, and pulls him into a tight hug. Her son, her little boy. “We're gonna do our best.”

*

Emma had held onto exactly two things from her childhood. Her blanket was one—her only proof that someone, somewhere, had cared about her before she was born. The second, a picture of herself at age nine, she was never sure why she kept. No one ever bought her school photos, of course, but she was made to sit for them anyway. The proofs would come back and every year she'd throw the order packet in the trash, except for that once. She slipped the picture into the folder of her math notebook, and somehow, she'd kept track of it through every single move since then.

It's worn at the corners now, twenty years later, but she puts it in a frame and gives it to Snow when they're alone at Snow and David's house, a few days before Christmas.

“Oh, Emma. Oh, God, you were beautiful.” Snow's fingers pass gingerly over the glass of the frame, as if she can almost touch her little girl, as if it's not merely a picture.

Emma shrugs. “No, I wasn't. My hair was a rat's nest, always. No one ever...” She leaves her sentence unfinished and runs a hand through her hair, remembering foster mothers who used to rake brushes roughly through her tangled curls, and how she learned not to whine about it. In the picture, her hair is as unruly as the look in her eyes, and her shirt is faded and too big.

“You're beautiful to me,” Snow tells her. “Always. Oh, Emma, Emma. I can hardly imagine you so young.” She's crying, of course she's crying, and maybe it wasn't such a good idea, to give her this reminder of what they will never get back.

“I'm sorry,” Emma says, her fingers plucking at the bow from the box she'd put the picture in. “It's... you get to have a real family now.”

Snow's eyes dart up from the photograph immediately and she blinks at Emma, looking like she's been slapped. “Emma, you are my real family. We're  _family._ You and me and your father, and Henry. This is it.”

“That's not... what I meant,” Emma says, and wants to rewind the day, wants to throw that picture away because there's nothing particularly warm to look back on from the fourth grade, anyway.

“You mean a _normal_ family,” Snow says gently, not a question.

Emma shrugs again. “The baby's coming. And you and David get to be together, and raise it together.”

“Emma. I know that... physically I'm too young to be your mother and I know that I _haven't_ been your mother for all these years but I _love_ you, just the same as I did when I held you as an infant. You still... when I look at you I still see my daughter, you _feel_ like my daughter. I love you, just as you are.”

Emma's smile is weak and sad. “You love me, but I'm not what you wanted.”

“It doesn't matter what I wanted before. Emma, you have to know. You have to believe, that... if I had never met you. If I had been given a choice, between getting my baby back, and—and a grown woman who's had a whole life that I wasn't a part of, I would have picked the baby. But I did meet you, and you became a part of my life. You may not be my baby anymore, but you are my daughter. And I could never give you up for anything. Anyone.”

“You would still pick the baby. You'd be stupid not to pick the baby,” Emma says, and her chest aches with the truth of it. _You're too old to be adopted_ , the other kids had told her. _No one's ever gonna want you._

“Oh, Emma,” her mother says, pulling her into an embrace that's just slightly awkward, with the swell of her belly between them. “Just ask Regina, I've always been very stupid.”

Emma clings to her mother like a child. She is grown and too old to need her in this way, but there will be a baby soon, filling this space, and Emma hides her face against Snow's neck and mumbles, “I love you, Mom. I know I never say it but I do.”

The baby presses a hand or a foot against Snow's stomach and Emma laughs when she can feel it against her own. Snow holds her and strokes her hair and says, “I love you more than I could ever say.”

Emma nods and doesn't let go and tries not to cry. “I know.”

“This baby doesn't change that. There is nothing in this world or any other that could make you any less mine. And there is nothing... there is nothing that can make up for what we lost. It will always be my greatest regret, that we weren't together. But you are precious to me, and to your father, and we need you. Desperately, Emma. This isn't a family without you.”

“Okay,” Emma says, fingers closing around a handful of her mother's shirt. “Okay.”

“You're stuck with me, all right? We're going to grow old together, you and me.” Snow's fingers comb through her daughter's hair, and Emma's laugh comes out more like a sob.

“That sounds nice, actually.”

*

The baby is born in the first week of March, early in the morning. It's a boy who Snow names after her father, and his birth comes so fast that by the time Emma gets to the hospital he's already clean and resting on his mother's chest.

They ask if Emma wants to hold him, and she does, realizing that the last time she held a baby it was Henry. It was Henry, just for a few minutes, and then he was gone. Snow cries when Emma lifts the baby from her arms, and she realizes that the last time her mother held a baby—the last time her mother held a baby it was Alexandra, but before that, it had been Emma.

Leo looks at her for a moment and then lets out a tentative whine. “Oh, hey, no,” Emma says quietly. “No, don't do that. Do you want your mom?” He squirms for a second and then quiets. “You're all right? We'll just give her a break, then, okay? You know, she's my mom, too. I know I look a little old for that, but it's true. She, um. She didn't get to raise me like she will with you, so I can't tell you what it's gonna be like, but um. She's a pretty good mom. Our dad's not bad, either. So you're really lucky, because-” She stops as her voice begins to break, and she thinks there's a pretty good chance her dad's crying already.

“Emma,” Snow whispers.

Emma just keeps looking at the baby, her brother, and remembers that nobody's being taken away today. “Because they love you so much. And everything's gonna be okay.”

She sits down in a chair by the bed and looks at Snow, finally. She's still blinking tears back fiercely but they start spilling from her eyes anyway when Snow reaches over to run her fingers through Emma's hair once, and then again, and then again.

“I'm going to cry all over your baby, Mom,” Emma says.

Her dad laughs and puts his hand on her shoulder as Snow smiles and tells her, “It's all right. We're fine.”

*

“He's a pretty cute baby,” Emma tells Regina later that morning, lids heavy with lack of sleep as she leans against Regina's kitchen counter and starts on her second cup of coffee. She wants nothing more than to go upstairs and collapse into Regina's immaculately made bed, but she has a town to police, and her deputy is busy with his new son.

Regina does nothing to mask the disinterest on her face. “Yes, I'm sure he is.”

“Aw, come on,” Emma says, smirking. “Don't pretend like you don't have a terrible track record hating Snow White's kids, so far.”

“That's irrelevant. You were a fluke. A freak accident.”

Emma's mouth twists as she tries not to laugh. “Look,” she says, pulling up a picture on her phone. “He's really cute.” He's sleeping in the picture, his little head covered by a tiny blue hat.

Regina keeps a straight face but her eyes soften just slightly, and Emma realizes the baby looks just a little bit like Henry had. “Yes,” Regina concedes. “Very handsome.”

“I didn't know,” Emma said, as she looks through the already quite large collection of photos on her phone.

“That he would be cute?” Regina regards her skeptically. “Babies generally are.”

“Not always,” Emma counters, and Regina smiles at her just barely, a tiny quirk of her lips. “But no, not that. I didn't know I'd love him. Right away, like this.”

Emma expects sarcasm, but instead Regina's hand comes to rest on the small of her back, soft and steady. “Love is difficult to predict. For people like us.”

Emma puts her phone down and wraps her arms around Regina's waist. “Are we ever going to stop being surprised when things turn out not to be awful?”

Regina takes a moment to answer. “I don't know. It's been... a long time.”

There is nothing to regret anymore, nothing they could have changed that would have made it easier but still led them here.

“Maybe now we'll have a chance to get used to it. You think?”

“Happily ever after?” Regina asks, and the derision in her voice is unmistakeable.

“No. Just happy.”

“I think I'd like that,” Regina says quietly.

 


End file.
